
(lass 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



I 






— 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 



W. F. |VANS, 

AUTHOB OF * MENTAL CUBE,' « MENTAL MEDICINE,' ' SODL AND BODY,' &0. 



" Beloved, I pray above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, 
n as thy soul prospereth." — 3d Epistle of John, v. 2. 



2 



BOSTON": 
H. H. CARTER & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

3 BEACON STREET, 

1884. 



<y%^ 



y 



Copyright, 1884. — W. F. Evans. 



B ALLEY COMBINATION TYPE. STEREOTYPED BY 

"W. J. SCHO FIELD, BOSTON.' *. ~ H. C. WHITCOMB & CO., BOSTON 



' 




CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



The Relation of the Divine Life to Human Life, or Trub 
Religion and Health. 



CHAPTER I. 
The True Idea of Religion, 13 



CHAPTER II. 

Religion a Development from within, and not a Foreign Ele- 
ment Imported into our Nature from without, . . 19 



CHAPTER III. 

The Power of the Religious Emotions over the Life and 

Health of Man, 28 



CHAPTER IV. 

All Religions Useful and Spiritually Medicinal, ... 35 

3 



«—_ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 



The Essential Idea of Christianity as Unfolded in the Johan- 

nean Gospel, 39 



CHAPTER VI. 
The Presence of God in the Material World and in the 



47 



CHAPTER VII. 
Saving and Healing Grace, or Medicine a Sacrament, . . 52 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Origin and Conservation of Life-Force, .... 58 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Scriptural Idea of Health and Disease, . . . . 65 

CHAPTER X. 

The Birth of the Christ as Illustrating the General law of 

Conception, and the Vital Relation of Man to God, . 70 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Divine Light within us an Unerring Guide in Human 

Life, 82 

CHAPTER XDI. 

On Divine Revelation as a Past Experience of Men, and as 88 
a Present Need of the Human Mind, 



CONTENTS. 5 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Nature and Extent of Inspiration, .... 94 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Theopneusty, or the Divine Afflatus, . . • • • 102 

CHAPTER XV. 

Inspiration Universal, or the Philosophy of Common Sense, 109 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Therapeutic Value of Prayer, 114 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Christ and Disease, or the Power of the Spiritual Life over 

the Body, 119 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Antagonism of the Christ-Principle and Disease, or the 

Healing Power of Jesus, 124 

CHAPTER XTX. 

Jesus as a Saviour, or Health-Giver, minus the Enchantment 

that Distance Lends to the View, 131 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Paraclete, or Christ the Spirit, 136 



CONTENTS. 



PART II. 



The Relation op Spirit to Matter, and op the Soul to 
the Body in Man. 



CHAPTER I. 
Matter has no Existence Independent of Mind or Spirit, . 145 



CHAPTER II. 

Visual Language, or the Spiritual Meaning of the Objects 

of Nature, 158 



CHAPTER III. 
The Body is Included in the Being of the Mind, . . .162 

CHAPTER IV. 

Matter an Unsubstantial Appearance, and is Created and Gov- 
erned by Thought, 170 

CHAPTER V. 
The Unconscious Region of Mental Action, . . .178 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Mind the Plastic or Formative Principle of the Body, • 184 

CHAPTER VII. 
Faith Makes us Whole, or the Christian Method of Cure, . 189 



_ 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Voluntary and Involuntary Action of the Mind on the Body, 198 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Morbific and Sanative Influence of Thought, . . 203 

CHAPTER X. 
The Divine Function of Imagination in the Cure of Disease, 209 



CHAPTER XI. 

Instinct as a Revelation from God, and a Guide to Health 

and Happiness, 217 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Higher Forms of Mental Life and Action, and their Cura- 
tive Influence, 225 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Blessedness and Health, or to be Happy is to be Well, . 231 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The True Idea of Sin, and its Relation to Disease, . • 235 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Nature of Regeneration, and its Influence upon the 

Bodily State, 2i\ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



The Creative Power of Thought, or Hegel's Philosophy as 

a Medicine, . . . 248 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Theopathy and Phrenopathy, or the Union of the Divine and 

Human in the Cure of Disease, 258 



PART III. 

Psycho-Therapeutics, or Practical Mental Cure. 

CHAPTER I. 

On the Method of Communicating a Sanative Mental Influ- 
ence, . . .... 273 



CHAPTER II. 

The Influence of Thought on the Body, and a Practical Use 
of it in the Cure of Disease, 



PREFACE. 



No intelligent observer of the signs of the times can fail to 
notice among philosophical minds a marked reaction against the 
dominant scientific materialism of the past century, and a tendency 
to return to a more spiritual view of human nature and the world 
at large. Idealism, which has always had a strong hold upon the 
deepest thinkers of the world from Plato downward, is again com- 
ing into prominence, and many of the leading scientists of the 
day exhibit an inclination to adopt it as furnishing the most satis- 
factory explanation of the phenomena of nature. The system of 
Berkeley is undergoing a resurrection, and, in connection with the 
spiritual philosophy of Swedenborg, will have more influence than 
ever in shaping the metaphysical systems of the future, and in giv- 
ing direction to the current of human thought. The present vol- 
ume of the author is an attempt to construct a theoretical and prac- 
tical system of phrenopathy, or mental-cure, on the basis of the 
idealistic philosophy of Berkeley, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. 
Its fundamental doctrine is that to think and to exist are one 
and the same, and that every disease is the translation into a 
bodily expression of a fixed jdea of the mind and a morbid way of 
thinking. If by any therapeutic device you remove the morbid 
idea, which is the spiritual image after the likeness of which the 

9 



_ 



10 PREFACE. 

body is formed, you cure the malady. The work lays no claim to 
originality except in the practical application of Idealism to the 
cure of the diseases of mind and body. It is the culmination of a 
life-long study of human nature, and to which the previous vol- 
umes of the author may be viewed as introductory. That its 
teachings will be fully accepted by all who peruse it is not to be 
expected. That there is a large and constantly increasing class 
of minds who are prepared to receive its doctrines, as a dry soil 
drinks in the vernal rain, he fully believes. To their thoughtful 
consideration the volume is dedicated, with the sincere prayer that 
they may find in it something more certain and satisfactory than 
the current materialistic systems of medication have been able to 
furnish. 

3} Beacon Street, Bosses* 



PART I. 



THE 



RELATION OF THE DIVINE LIFE 
TO HUMAN LIFE, 

OB 

TRUE RELIGION AND HEALTH. 



"There is one God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and 
in you all."— Eph. iv: 6. 

" He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and are moved, and 
have our being."— Acts xvii: 27, 28. 

" An indispensable requisite to a blessed life is that this living religion in us 
should at least go so far as to convince us entirely of our own nothingness in our- 
selves, and of our being only in God and through God; that we should at least 
feel this relationship continually and without interruption; and that, even 
though it should not be expressed either in thought or language, it should yet 
be the secret spring, the hidden principle, of all our thoughts, feelings, emotionsi 
and desires."— -FicMe's Popular Works, p. 437. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 



CHAPTEH I. 



THE TRUE IDEA OE RELIGION. 



In discussing the subject of Religion and Health, and the rela- 
tion of the one to the other, it is necessary that we form some defin- 
ite conception of what religion is, and what we mean by health. 

Religion is certainly not a mere intellectual state, the belief of 
a creed however orthodox, or an assent to any number of theolog- 
ical propositions. 

It does not consist in outward action, — the performance of the 
outward mechanism of forms and ceremonies, however grand and 
imposing, or however humble and simple, from the Roman Catho- 
lic ceremonial in the Gothic cathedral down to the forms, or want 
of forms, in the meeting-house of the Society of Friends. I do 
not affirm that either of these elements or both — the intellectual 
assent to some form of belief and the practice of some outward 
worship — may not enter into it, and be most intimately associ- 
ated with it, but they constitute no necessary part of its nature and 
essence. They may be varied in form, like the colors of the canie- 
leon, and are continually changing, while religion remains the 

13 



14 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

same. It is very certain that there may be mary gradations of 
religious intensity in men whose creed is the same, and their out- 
ward forms of worship identical. The intellectual state belonging 
to religion is intuitional, and arises from feeling, and is not merely 
an act of the logical consciousness. This feeling, when left to 
itself, like all other feelings, will spontaneously create its outward 
and appropriate forms of expression. 

There are two definitions of religion by two of the religious 
thinkers of Germany, who knew from their own consciousness what 
they were saying, both having been educated among the Moravi- 
ans. These two definitions, when combined, give us a clear con- 
ception of the essential nature of religion. " Jacobi, who was 
first to see the full worth and signification of feeling in the domain 
of philosophy, defines religion to be a faith, resting upon feeling, 
in the reality of the super-sensual and ideal. The other is the 
definition of Schleiermacher, than whom no man ever pursued with 
greater penetration of mind and earnestness of spirit the pathway 
of a Divine philosophy, and he places the essence of religion in 
the absolute feeling of dependence, and of a conscious relationship 
to God, originating immediately from it." (MorelVs Philosophy 
of Religion, p. 71.) When this feeling rises to a conscious union 
with God, and to an intuitive perception of the spiritual truths 
that underlie it, and are naturally associated with it, we have relig- 
ion in its highest form — its Divine reality. For religion (from 
re and ligo, to bind together) is the conscious reunion of the soul 
with God, after having been separated from Him by the disjunc- 
tive agency of sin, or it is recovering the lost consciousness that 
our life is inseparable from that of the Divine Being, and is iden- 
tical with His. If religion does not "bind" us to God, it is super- 
ficial and worthless. It is valuable only so far as it does this. 

Sectarian creeds and external and fixed forms of worship are no 
more a necessary part of religion than warts, tumors, and fungus 
growths are of the human body. These may seem to have a con- 
nection with the body, but they are no essential part of it, and 
they can be removed, and the patient be all the better for it. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 15 

In the religious history of every age and country, we find a cer- 
tain class of minds who are impatient of ceremonial forms, techni- 
cal distinctions, and dry, dogmatic formulas, and who have followed 
the yearnings of their own hearts for something better, and have 
yielded themselves to the instinctive impulses of the soul to rise 
from the shadow to the substance, from the sign to the thing signi- 
fied, from the human to the Divine, the transient to the enduring, 
and from the non-essential to the essential in religion. Christi- 
anity, when properly apprehended, will meet the wants and satisfy 
the spiritual cravings of all such minds. Its constant aim is to 
unite the sundered link between man and God, and to bring the 
finite and infinite into a conscious harmony and felt oneness. 

Religion may, and actually does, exist in a thousand different 
forms and degrees. The highest development of religious thought 
and feeling is that of a Christian Pantheism, not the cold, intel- 
lectual system of Spinoza, but one nearer to that of the warm and 
loving Eichte, who exhibited the blessedness of a life in God. The 
D:vine inspiration and wisdom of Jesus the Christ, is seen in his 
placing religion in something above and beyond all ceremonial 
observances, and in teaching that the highest style of religion is 
found in the consciousness of God within, — the intuitive percep- 
tion of the life of God in the soul of man. The system of Jesus 
and of Buddha here find a point of contact and flow together. 
The Buddhist Nirvana, or ideal conception of the summum bonum, 
the supreme good, was not originally a state of annihilation, — - 
which is no state at all, much less one of happiness, — but was 
rather the rest of the soul in its complete union with God, and its 
harmony with the Divine Life. I cannot avoid this view, although 
Max Miiller, in his Science of Religion, has seemed to prove to 
the contrary. It is that condition of union with the Godhead 
which Jesus so often affirmed of himself, — not a mathematical, but 
a spiritual oneness, which does not destroy the feeling of our indi- 
viduality. It is that for which the mystics of all ages have longed. 
It was sought as a realization of their highest ideal of a state of 
blessedness by Eckhart, Tauler, Buysbrock, Behmen, Guyon, and 



16 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

others. This is the essence of all religion ; for a system that does 
not unite Divinity and Humanity does not answer to the funda- 
mental idea of the word. In the evolution of the religious life of 
mankind we see what is the coming stage of its advancement. It 
will be the revelation of God in the individual soul. This is a 
stage of the religious consciousness to which the world is being 
borne by influences which it did not originate, and which cannot 
be suppressed. All genuine science and philosophy are drifting 
in that direction, and all church organizations will follow in their 
wake. 

A spiritual science of religion, the philosophy of the relations 
of the finite mind to the Infinite Being, of matter to spirit, and of 
the body to the soul in man, will be the last to be worked cut in 
the progress of human knowledge, but when it is elaborated 
according to the law of evolution, it will change the life of the 
world, and usher in a new and higher dispensation of Christianity. 
The great mistake of men is, they seek ivithout for what they can 
only find within. ' Within the depths of the soul are infinite 
spiritual capabilities and possibilities. In every human mind is 
the hidden germ of an endless development. God dwells in man, 
and the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. •; The Divine ele- 
ment in our nature is not there as an idle guest or spectator, but 
as an ever-operative force. God's activity is co-extensive with his 
presence. We cannot separate from the idea of his presence that 
of causation. The Divine Being is the causa causarum, the prime 
cause that lies back of all secondary causes. This doctrine was 
introduced into philosophy by an Arabian and a Mohammedan. 
Says Sir Wm. Hamilton : "As far as I have been able to trace it, 
this doctrine was first promulgated toward the commencement of 
the twelfth century by Algazel, of Bagdad, a pious Mohammedan 
philosopher, who not undeservedly obtained the title of the Imaum 
of the World. Algazel did not deny the reality of causation, but 
he maintained that God was the only efficient cause in nature ; 
and that second causes are not properly causes, but only occasions 
of the effect." {The Metaphysics of Sir Wm. Hamilton, by Prof 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 17 

Bowen, p. 540.) The subject was much discussed by the philoso- 
phers of subsequent ages, but the most distinguished advocate of 
the doctrine of Algazel was Malebranche. Ee believed and 
taught that God was the only active force in the universe, and 
even in the body. What we call second causes were only the occa- 
sions on which the Divine power acted. There is an important sub- 
stratum of intuitional and logical truth in this view. A cause is 
that without which something we call an effect could not exist or 
take place. But can anything exist without God ? If not, then 
all secondary causes are but effects, and must be referred back to 
the great First Cause. 

Some minds have so vivid a consciousness of God as to lose 
sight of everything else, at least everything else is thrown into 
the back-ground. Such was the mind of Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel. And this was emphatically true of Spinoza, who has been 
misunderstood and misrepresented. Novalis characterizes him as 
"the God- intoxicated man." The essence, or fundamental idea 
of his philosophy is contained in a single sentence of his writings, 
which is certainly in harmony with the Christian system. Its infi- 
delity consists in giving a more intense reality to God than most 
people have done, but not more than Jesus himself did. Deus 
est omnium rerum causa immanens, non transiens, God is the im- 
manent not transient cause of all things; or, in other words, God 
is permanently resident in nature, and not a power outside of it 
that has occasionally acted upon it. 

We have seen in what has been said above that religion is a 
conscious union with God. All religions, however imperfect, are 
an instinctive seeking after this, and, in a measure, accomplish it. 
But it is a self-evident truth that what is the source of life must 
be the primal cause and fountain of health. The efficiency of any 
riAnedial agency must, in its last analysis, be referred to a Divine 
power and causation. But a soul, made in the image of God, may 
come into vital communication and fellowship with God, the only 
Life. This is, at the same time, both religion and health in their 



18 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

highest idea. As religion, in its inmost essence, consists in an 
intuitive consciousness of a Divine life in the soul, so health is the 
Divine life within us coming to a, free activity and expression in all 
our voluntary powers. 



CHAPTER H 

RELIGION IS A DEVELOPMENT FROM WITHIN, AND NOT A FOREIGN 
ELEMENT IMPORTED INTO OUR NATURE FROM WITHOUT. 

The Divine element in human nature is not something of which 
we are born destitute, and that is afterwards to be superadded to 
our being by instruction and the religious propagandism of the 
church, but is the seed, and the only vital germ, from which our 
existence springs. This Divine germ is enclosed as in a pericarp 
in every one of the human race, — the savage and the saint. It is 
not the true function of preaching, and of religious instruction, to 
import the Divine life as a foreign element into human nature, 
for it is already there, but to bring men to a conscious realization 
of this truth. The religious element in man is not something 
communicated to him from without, but is an original constituent 
of his nature, and one which may be drawn forth and modified ia 
its action by instruction and influences received from others. It 
is not something entirely adventitious, but is inherent in the 
essence of the soul. The universal prevalence of religion in the 
world among all races and in all ages of human history would 
militate against the theory that it is something extraneous, and 
goes to prove that it is natural to man, and a necessary outcome 
of his mental constitution, as much as language, or poetry, or 
music, or civil government. This does not make it any less 
Divine, for God is in all natural powers, susceptibilities, and laws. 
Certain it is, I have never found a man in whom the religious 
sentiments were utterly suppressed or annihilated. In many men 
19 



20 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

the religions nature is latent, and overlaid by a deep covering of 
externality, but there is still the vital germ in the depths of the 
soul that awaits the vivifying touch of the Divine Spirit to cause 
it to sprout, and to be unfolded into the flower and fruit of a relig- 
ious consciousness and life. It is only a question of the best 
means of developing this Divine instinct of the soul. A seed may 
remain dormant for a long series of years without losing its vitality, 
and when exposed to the proper influences of moisture, heat, and 
genial sunshine, it starts into a manifested life spontaneously. As 
we could never be taught morality without a moral nature and a 
moral sense to distinguish between right and wrong, and as we 
could not be taught music or mathematics without an inborn 
geinus for those sciences, so the same is true of religion. All 
education (from ex and duco, to draw out) implies something in 
the hidden depths of the soul to be educed or developed into con- 
scious activity. On this principle is based the system of Frobel. 
All moral and religious education consists in awakening and pro- 
perly directing what is already potentially within us. On this 
subject Mr. Morell justly observes : " We could never be taught 
religion by any external appliances unless there was some inward 
susceptibility which may indeed be aroused or regulated by disci- 
pline, but which has a prior existence as a primary element of our 
spiritual nature." {Philosophy of Religion, p. 65.) 

This view, when fully recognized, must essentially modify our 
idea of the nature of regeneration. It is no longer a new creation, 
but a development. Religion will never be propagated with any 
great success unless this self-evident and fundamental truth is 
acknowledged, and the means of propagandism be adapted to it. 
The true religious life is an evolution, the unfolding of a latent 
and dormant power within us. 

We must not confound religion with theology. Theology is 
what we think about religion, and this is an ever-changing thing, 
but true religion remains the same. The stars do not constitute 
astronomy, nor the rocky strata of the earth geology, but astronomy 
is what we know about the stars, and geology what we know of 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE 21 

think about the rocks. Religion is the union of man with God, 
or as Schclling defines it, " the union of the finite with the infin- 
ite." But this may be predicated of all men. If it be true, as 
Paul affirms, that, " in Him we live, and move, and have our being" 
(Acts xvii:27), or in other words, that God is the inmost Life 
of all that is, and the ground of our own existence, then no human 
mind is or can be entirely sundered from the Divine Mind, or can 
have any life that is not a manifestation of the One Life. We 
may loose the consciousness of this, but there is a region of the 
soul where God prepetually dwells, and in which our life is linked 
to the Deity. The incarnation is not a solitary miracle in the 
course of human history, and something outside of that fixed order 
of things which we call the laws of nature, and confined to one 
individual of the race, but a universal fact, without which the exist- 
ence of the soul here, and its immortality hereafter, would be an 
impossibility. The human soul is distinct from the Deity, but 
not sepatate. It retains its self-consciousness and individuality 
and never loses its personal identity in an all-prevading impersonal 
Pneuma, or becomes a part of the abstract Reason. Though the 
soul retains a connection with the totality of spirit, it is never 
merged in it, like a drop falling into the ocean. The more fully 
and consciously it is united to the All, the more it becomes itself. 
The true theory is this, — that owing to the incarnation of God in 
every individual soul, and in the whole of humanity, every man 
has within himself a region of the soul where he may have direct 
and immediate communication and converse with the Divine 
Mind. Man is an individual endowed with free will, but in being 
an individual possessing self-consciousness, he does not become 
an exile from God. He is not banished from the Divine Presence, 
but is still inclosed within the infinite circle of the Divine Life. 
Through this medium he may learn all that is essential to his 
highest interests in this world and the next, and may gain the 
highest truths of wisdom in relation to health of mind and body. 
All our knowledge of spiritual things comes from this source, and 
is, in a proper sense, a revelation from God, and a ray of that un- 



22 THE DIVINE LAW OE CURE. 

created and Divine Word that " lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world." All men, in favored moments, have experiences 
of this spiritual illumination, this awakening and quickening of 
the intuitive preception, and might have much more if they under- 
stood the laws and conditions of its transmission and receptivity. 
The reality of a present inspiration from God, both of life and 
light, in all human souls, can be established as a fact in mental 
philosophy, resting on a foundation of evidence far more substan- 
tial than that of most metaphysical theories. 

One of the first results of this nearness of man to God is the 
revelation of God to man. The existence of God is a truth to be 
seen, not to be proved. There is no demonstration of the being of 
God that does not involve some logical absurdity, or, at least, a 
petitio principii, or begging of the question. The central sun of 
our system shines with his own light, and makes himself known to 
all the planets that revolve around this central orb. Their light is 
borrowed or imparted light, and not self-originated. God may be 
so very near to us that we cannot see him, but only feel him, and 
this is the highest possible evidence. Thus, Paul says that we 
should seek the Lord, if haply we might feel after Him and find 
Him, though He is not far from every one of us. (Acts xvii : 27.) 
Conscious contact of the soul with God, an all-satisfying commun- 
ion and fellowship with Him, is the highest demonstration of His 
existence, for to feel anything to be true is to attain to a state of 
certainty and freedom from all doubt. It has been truly said by 
Immanuel Hermann Fichte that " God is not merely an object of 
faith, as is usually said; He operates faith in us, and gives in this 
very fact the most lively proof of His existence and care." He 
makes known Himself to the religious consciousness with more cer- 
tainty and force of evidence than the external world is made 
known to our senses. He reveals Himself to the intuitive reason, 
— or, as Kant calls it, the pure reason, — which is the highest 
evidence the mind is capable of receiving. In the attainment 
of certainty as to the Divine Existence, so that the being of God is 
no longer a doubtful hypothesis, but He becomes to us the only 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 23 

Keality, our pathway is opened to the fountain of all health and 
blessedness. As in the age of Augustus all the magnificent high- 
ways of the empire centred in Home, and conducted the traveller 
from the provinces by an unerring route to the place whence eman- 
ated all subordinate authority and power, so to the man who has 
attained to the consciousness of God, and of our vital relations to 
Him, all remedies will conduct us to the central Life, and will 
bring the sick and bewildered wanderer to Him, from whom pro- 
ceeds every sanative potency for soul or body. For it is the 
Divine alone that heals. There is one troth, of which we must 
never lose sight — '•that there is hut one Life in the universe. As 
Fiehte has said, "Being is simple and uncompounded. There is 
not a multiplicity of beings, but only one Being.' , Being and 
life are the same. This one Being, one Life, is what Jesus calls 
the Father, because from Him everything springs. By existence 
we mean manifested being. This is endlessly varied and multi- 
plied. But all existences, from the atom to the world, from the 
insect to the angel, have their ground in the One Being and Life of 
which they are but manifestations to consciousness, that is, to sense 
and thought. All the millions of the race are but the rising into 
individuality of the ocean of being, but never lose their connection 
with it. They are a personal cropping out of the Primal Life, as 
mountains are an upheaval of the primitive rock, but are not sun- 
dered from it. The Father is in us, and we are in the Father. In 
the innermost root of our existence we are inseparably and perpetu- 
ally connected with Him, otherwise we could not exist at all, and 
because of it we shall live forever. 

" An insight into the absolute unity of the human existence 
with the Divine is certainly the profoundest knowledge that man 
can attain. Before Jesus this knowledge had nowhere existed; 
and since his time, we may say down even to the present clay, ifc 
has been again as good as rooted out, at least in profane literature," 
( Way Towards the Blessed Life, Lecture VI.) 

The grand error of the religious world has ever been in separat- 
ing God too far from man. It has believed in a Divine Being 



24 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

who is somewhere, but not here, and indeed who is anywhere and 
every where except in man. 

It is a fundamental doctrine of Swedcnborg's spiritual philoso- 
phy, and one that comes continually to view in all his voluminous 
writings, that there is only one Life in the universe, and angels, 
spirits, and men are but recipients of it. (Arcana Celestia, 
3742.) Our life is perpetually imparted from Him. His Being 
flows forth into our existence which is but a manifestation of it, and 
is continuous with it. Our individual life is identical with His, 
and is included as an item, or an atom, in the sum total of the 
Divine Existence. The thread of our life, without a break, is ever £ 
unwound from His. 

Swedcnborg also affirms (Arcana Celestia, 4525) that man is 
so made that he can apply to himself life from the Lord. In 
other words, as an individual existence, he can appropriate more of 
the Divine Life and make it his own, as you can enlarge the 
stream that flows from the lake in the mountains, and increase its 
volume by deepening the channel. In certain elevated states we 
become more highly charged with a Divine vitality, and become, in 
a more exalted degree, incarnations of the Deity. This fits us for 
the higher uses of life, — as the spiritual instruction of others, and 
the cure of their mental and bodily maladies. This is what is 
called, in the expressive language of the New Testament, being 
endued with power from on high. (Luke xxiv : 49.) 

Descartes, the father of modern speculative philosophy, affirmed 
that God has accorded to created things no principle of subsist- 
ence in themselves, and that the existence of everything, from 
moment to moment, is due to the renewal each moment of the 
creative act of the Deity. (Med. iii. p. 23, ed. 1663.) Since 
his day, the tendency of philosophy has been towards a fuller 
recognition of a Divine Life and Force in Nature. To a truly 
religious and spiritual man the world is not a mere dead mass of 
material forces, but is everywhere seen to throb and pulsate with 
the life of God. It is everywhere inter-penetrated with a living 
Intelligence and Thought, of which it is the existence or outward 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 25 

form and phenomenon. By Fichte, one of the most profoundly 
religious men of any age or country, Nature is elevated into a liv- 
ing and sacred manifestation of the One Eternal, Divine Life. 
According to him. "Religion consists in regarding and recogniz- 
ing all earthly life as the necessary development of the One, 
Original, Perfectly Good and Perfectly Blessed Divine Life." 
( Characteristics of the Present Age, p. 256.) 

Especially is man, in a preeminent degree, a manifestation of 
God. " According to the meaning of true religion, and in particu- 
lar of Christianity, humanity is the one, visible, efficient, living, 
and independant existence of God ; or, if the expression be not 
misunderstood,, the one manifestation and effluence of that Exist- 
ence, — a beam from the eternal Light, which divides itself, not in 
reality, but only to mere earthly vision, into many individual rays." 
(Characteristics of the Present Age, p. 198.) 

However strange it may seem, it is nevertheless true that this 
higher view of God and of our relation to Him, which arises natu- 
rally out of the profoundest religious consciousness and feeling, has 
almost always been viewed by more superficial minds as equivalent 
to atheism. Spinoza was ignorantly misapprehended, and has been 
maliciously defamed. The memoiy of the " God-intoxicated man " 
has been ignominiously buried beneath the stones that the ferocious 
zeal of shallow souls have cast upon it. Every candid, religious 
mind will unhesitatingly adopt the language of Prof. Ferrier when 
he says: "This I will avouch, that all the outcry which has been 
raised against Spinoza has its origin in nothing but ignorance, 
hypocrisy, and cant. If Spinoza errs, it is in attributing not cer- 
tainly too much to the great Creator, for that is impossible, but too 
little to the creature of his hands." (Institutes of Metaphysics, 
p. 554.) 

Schleiermacher speaks of Spinoza as "that holy and yet out- 
cast man, who was full of the sentiment of religion, because he 
was filled with the Holy Spirit." Says Cousin: "Instead of 
accusing Spinoza of atheism, he should be subjected to the oppo- 
site reproach." Prof. Saisset savs of him: "He has been loudly 



■■ 



2(3 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

accused of atheism and impiety. The truth is that never did a 
man believe in God with a faith more profound, with a soul more 
sincere, than Spinoza. Take God from him, and you take from 
him his system, his thought, his life." 

Spinoza denied, as many great and pious divines have done, the 
free agency of man. Hegel escapes this charge by making the 
very essence of spirit to consist in freedom, and that of matter in 
passivity. (IlegeVs Philosophy of History, BohrCs edition, 
p. 18.) 

IVhen Spinoza affirms that God is the only substance, he uses 
the word not in a physical but in a metaphysical sense. Accord- 
ing to him, substance is that which does not depend upon anything 
else for its existence. (Ethics, Part I., p. 3.) It is that which 
exists absolutely and of itself, and in this sense it is only another 
name for Pure Being. It is equivalent to the Hebrew Jehovah, 
which is derived from a substantive verb, and signifies permanent 
being. With that definition of it, he logically infers that God is 
the only Substance. He is the underlying, or, more properly, 
the under-standing, reality and support of all things. They do 
not exist separately from God, but in and from Him. Spinoza 
asserts "that whatever is is in God; and nothing can be, nor be 
conceived to be, without God." (Ethics, Part I., Prop. XV.) The 
world and all it contains are the ex-istence or out-standing of the 
Divine Being. This gives to the Universe its appropriate name 
(from unum, one, and versus, a turning), the to nav of the Greeks, 
the mundus of the Latin, the welt of the German, and the world of 
the English, which is radically the same as whirl. 

Jesu3 affirms that God is Spirit, — not a spirit, which is contrary 
to the Greek ; and spirit is essentially active and living. God is 
not merely an extraneous, isolated, individual Being, — though his 
personality, in any proper sense of the word, is not denied, — but 
the internal, collective, and intrinsic energy and Life of all things 
froin the sparrow to the archangel. He is the ever-present, ever- 
acting, and indivisible Life of the world. Under the idea of the 
Primal Life he was apprehended by the Greeks as well as by the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 27 

Hebrews. Zeus and theos, and even the Latin deus, are all 
derived from a verb meaning to live. Kuss, a distinguished 
physiologist of Strasbourg, has defined life to be " all that which 
cannot be explained by chemistry or physics." But all the laws 
of chemistry and of every physical science are only modes of 
action of the One Life. Physiology and even Psychology are in 
their inmost essence only individual manifestations of the Divine 
Existence in man. As one has said, who will not be suspected 
of any heretical taint : " There is something grand in the idea of 
the unity of all being, and the connection of our life with the 
whole life of the universe." (Christlieb''s Modern Doubt and 
Christian Belief p. 188.) 






CHAPTER III. 

THE POWER OF THE RELIGIOUS EMOTIONS OTER THE LIFE OF MAN. 

The region of the religious sentiments and feelings is the seat 
of the kingdom of heaven in man. The religious emotions are 
the most powerful of all the principles to which our nature can 
appeal. They can hold the animal nature in chains, and control 
and restrain our hereditary "bent from any wrong direction. Even 
when distorted by superstition, and directed into a wrong channel, 
they give a force of character which breaks down all minor oppo- 
sition, and an almost supernatural energy to human nature, but 
when of a pure and elevated description, and united with a high 
moral sensibility, and under the guidance of an exalted intellectual 
state, they lend to our nature a power, a dignity, and a glory 
which shows its alliance with the Divinity here, and gives the 
clearest intimations of its exalted destiny hereafter. (MoreWs 
Philosophy of Religion, p. 23.) 

The history of the world is full of illustrations of the power of 
religion' to move and control great masses of men. The conquests 
of the Jews under Joshua were effected by the animating influence 
of a religion by no means perfect, but better than that of the tribes 
they overran and displaced. The brilliant career of the Persian 
empire under Cyrus found its inspiring principle in the Zend- 
Avesta. The petty tribes of Arabia were galvanized into an irre- 
sistable life and conquering force by the Koran of Mohammed, 
which still maintains its hold upon millions of the human family. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 29 

An hundred and fifty millions of Hindoos have been moulded and „ 
directed by their sacred writings, the Vedas and Puranas, for more , 
than twenty-five centuries. The writings of the mild and gentle 
Buddha, who approaches in spirit the nearest to Jesus, hold sway 
over one-third of mankind, and have for many ages. The religion 
of Confucius, as contained in the " Kings " and the " Four Books," 
has given shape to the civilization and the every-day life of the 
millions of China. The power of religion to inspire to action 
great masses of men is seen in the Crusades, during which Europe 
was poured out upon Asia, under the preaching of Peter the Her- 
mit, like a stream of lava from a volcano. What men can suffer 
for religion is illustrated in the lives and deaths of the mar- 
tyrs and reformers of all ages and countries. All these things 
show the power of the religious nature, when developed into 
activity, over the life of man. It gives energy to all below it, the 
intellect and even the body. It is a power when properly educated 
and directed that, by its native Divine right, comes forth from the 
inmost depths and sublimest heights of our being, and assumes com- 
mand of every department of our nature. From its throne, in the 
inmost palace of the soul, it reigns dei gratia over the whole 
external domain of mind and body. 

In the system of the Christ, and in the apostolic Church, relig- 
ion was a spiritual medicine and a means of cure. In the spirit- 
ual philosophy of Jesus, religion and health were viewed as one. 
Health of body was external holiness, or wholeness, and holiness 
was internal health. But the power of the spirit over disease was 
gradually lost sight of both in the doctrine and practice of the 
Church. As the religion of the Christ spread, it seems, except 
in scattered individual cases, to have lost in depth what it gained 
in surface extension, and at length the priests of religion, who were 
but a poorly-defined shadow of Jesus, stood in dumb and power- 
less amazement before diseases that yielded at once to the primitive 
spiritual power and Divine force. 

Religion is influential over the life and health of soul and body 
in proportion to its depth, and powerless in an exact ratio to its 



30 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

shallowness. Genuine religion, and a true spiritual philosophy, 
raise the soul above all mere appearances, the surface of things, 
and all empty show, and penetrate to the very nature of things, 
and thus exhibit the most felicitous use of the spiritual powers, the 
greatest depth and acuteness of thought, and the highest strength 
of character. All these are favorable to a vigorous health of the 
mind, and therefore of the body. The religion of the day is too 
superficial, and has thus lost its sanative value. It is a sort of 
pious coloring stamped upon the external memory, the mere sur- 
face of our being. It does not strike through the tissue, and easily 
wears off. Its outward expression is a mechanical round of cere- 
monies, and posturing of the body, or a repetition of cant phrases 
that have lost their spiritual meaning, — a sort of parrot talking 
where the words are too large for the ideas in the mind of the one 
who utters them, and which are consequently empty sounds. The 
religious zeal of such persons, full of sound without sense, seems 
to a thoughtful mind like acting in the pulpit, and in the confer- 
ence room, instead of upon the stage, the drama of Shakespeare 
under another form of "Much Ado About Nothing." The faith of 
such a person, instead of being the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen, dwindles down, when closely 
examined, to an opinion borrowed from others. Its moral code, its 
Decalogue, is to do what most people do, and especially to ape the 
life of the ecclesiastical organization to which it belongs without 
much vital attachment to it. In their speaking in the " assembly 
of the saints," they use symbolic language which they have 
acquired in the same way as they learned to talk originally, that 
is, by imitation of others. The creed is a tradition, and not a pres- 
ent Divine conviction. They speak in riddles, with no power to 
interpret them, or to translate them into the definite language of 
a spiritual science. They dream dreams with no Daniel at hand 
to explain them. In this state of things, the trumpet of the Gos- 
pel gives an uncertain sound, and the creed to which the man has 
given an unintelligible assent is written in a spiritual tongue that 
has become a dead language, or, at least, a foreign one, which is 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 31 

no longer the soul's vernacular. All this is but the foam on the 
great current of the religious life of the world. Underneath it is 
a region of Divine life that has not been stirred. 
I A certain degree of mental activity is necessary to health, both 
of soul and body. It maintains the body in a state of perpetual 
youthfulness, — a constant juvenility, — for intellectual and spirit- 
ual growth is the mental state we call adolescence (from adolesco, 
to grow). In the other world we return to a state of perpetual 
youthfulness, because we enter upon a state of constant progress. 
The cause of old age and death is not a physical one ; it is meta- 
physical. It is a cessation of growth, — a stasis, or standing still, in 
our intellectual life, j Any creed, or form of religion, that demands 
for its acceptance a torpidity of the reflective and reasoning faculty, 
and that can exist only by suppressing all active thinking, is not 
mentally healthful. A religion, to be spiritually healthy, and to 
furnish any nutriment to the souls of men, must be co-existent in 
the soul with a 'profound thoughtjulness, in opposition to that 
light-hearted and shallow thoughtlessness which professes to believe 
so much, — and even the most absurd and incredible dogmas, — but 
does not in reality possess the power of realizing a profound con- 
viction of anything. The bigotry and narrowness of such persons 
is always in an exact ratio with their shallowness and spiritual 
ignorance. 

Religion being, as we have defined it, the conscious union of tho 
soul with God, or at least an instinctive conatus to realise this, 
must bring us into closer and more vital and influential relations 
with the Central Life than anything else. To know God aright is 
eternal life. (Jno. xvii: 3.) It is only in union with Him 
that we live at all, and health is only a mode or condition of life. 
Religion, as thus defined, is that alone which can give to the soul 
the quality of immortality. Life, whatever it is, is only in the 
soul, and is a derivation and perpetual gift of God. The body 
neither lives nor dies. It lives from the spirit, and this from the 
Deity. From the cessation of the organic movements of the bod}', 
or what we call death, we arc no more to infer that the spiritual 



32 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

force, which actuated that life, and those physiological movements, 
is annihilated, than we are to conclude that the spinning-girl is 
dead because the wheel stands still, or that the woman who runs 
the sewing-machine has passed out of existence because the 
machinery is found at night to be silent and motionless. There is 
but One Life in the universe. All else is derived, and not origi- 
nal. It is the true function of a religious and spiritual philosophy 
to teach men how to make this great truth available for the cure 
of all mental unhappiness and physical maladies. 

God is the only Reality. On this subject Kant has said all 
that we can think or know in few words. It is absolutely impossi- 
ble that nothing should exist. This is a truth of the intuitive 
reason. An absolutely necessary Being, therefore, exists, who is 
single, simple, and must be a spirit, for no idea that we can form 
of matter answers to this conception. This necessary Being com- 
prises all reality, and is the Supreme Ground of all possible 
Reality. This Being is what we call God. This is a rational 
pantheism; it makes God the underlying Reality of all other 
things. Kant brought his transcendental view of God and of man's 
relation to Him up to the imperfectly drawn and separating line 
between an infinite truth and an essential falsity. Spinoza crossed 
the Rubicon, and, by losing sight of our individuality, carried his 
philosophy over on the wrong side of the line. Paul expresses in 
guarded language the highest truth, — that in God we live, and 
move, and have our being. (Acts xvii: 28.) No remedial 
device, or redeeming agency, can have any saving power that is 
not borrowed from Him who is the only Life and Supreme Reality. 
A union with God, which brings our consciousness of individuality 
down to the lowest point, and makes God the All in all, as exhib- 
ited in the life of Jesus, who could say "I and my Father are 
one," is the highest condition of health and blessedness. 

Can we attain to a consciousness of God ? Raymond Lull 
(born anno 1236, in the island of Majorca) speaks for all great 
minds when he says " The spirit longs after nothing as it does 
after God." But a Deity that I can never find is to me little bet- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 33 

ter than none. The various churches claim to have a revelation 
from God, but they will never satisfy our spiritual cravings until 
they instruct us how to obtain a revelation of God. There is a 
power in the soul by which we may attain to an inward sense of the 
Deity. Bernard, of Clairvaux (A. D. 1091), affirms that in the 
third stage of the development of the spiritual life we reach a posi- 
tion where the soul has an experience of the Divine. {Neander's 
History of Christianity and the Church, Yol. IV., p. 372.) 

To know God is eternal life, and He has not hidden Himself 
from us in an impenetrable darkness. There is a power in all 
human souls, call it what you will, — psychometry with Buchanan, 
intuition with Jacobi, or faith with Wesley, — by which God may 
become an object of perception or intuition. He is then no longer 
the Great Unrevealed of Basilides, nor the Abyss of the Gnostic 
Valentine. Wesley defined faith to be "a divine evidence and con- 
viction of God and of the things of God." David Hartley, not- 
withstanding his materialism, recognized the power of the soul to 
attain to an inward sense of God, and calls it theopathy, and avers 
that it is a right and beneficial condition. Jesus declares that the 
pure in heart see God. And why not ? Shall the material world 
alone be visible to us, and the only Reality be hidden from our 
perception ? The pulpit is telling us what somebody has thought 
about God, and gives its hungry hearers for spiritual nutriment 
traditionary beliefs of the past, but we long to hear what it knows 
of God. It will ever be shorn of its power as long as its preach- 
ing is only a dogmatic history, and not like that of Jesus, an 
original knowledge of God and of a spiritual world. 

In the system of the Christ it is made our highest duty not only 
to love God but also to know Him, for can we, in the highest 
sense, love a being or a thing about whom we know nothing ? In 
Christianity the Spirit is promised to teach us all things, and to 
guide into all truth ; it searches all things, yea, the deep things oi 
God. (HegeVs Philosophy of History, p. 15.) The objects o{ 
nature are a Divine Theophany, or an appearance of God to the 
sensuous range of the mind's perception, as the body in man is a 



34 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

manifestation of the soul. That God is the All is no new truth, 
but is as old as religion. It was the grand arcanum of the Orphic 
theology. According to Dr. Cudworth, Orpheus taught that " this 
universe and all things belonging to it were made within God ; 
that He is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things." 
(Intellectual System of the Universe, Vol. I, pp. 108-112.) 

There can be no profound religious life of the soul as long as 
we look upon the existence of God as a thing probable rather 
than certainly known. We know God as we know the existence 
of the spirit of man from its manifestation in the body. Every 
individual organism is an embodiment of the activity of the all- 
comprehending Life. The Whole, the All, is in each of the parts, 
or, as Goethe has it, " If you wish to appreciate the whole, you 
must see the Whole in the smallest." God does not impinge 
externally upon the universe. He moves the world from within. 
As he is out of time and space, there is an indivisible unity of 
God in every object of nature. This is true of the soul in the 
body. Every spot on the face of the earth is a Peniel or vision of 
God, where we meet Him face to face ; and we need not go beyond 
the place where we are to find a Bethel or house of God. To 
sunder any part of the earth's surface from God, when we are 
there, is to be for the time being an atheist, or without God. 

Bishop Berkeley, whose theological soundness has never been 
questioned, whatever may have been said of his idealistic philoso- 
phy, very truly says: "God is known as certainly and immedi- 
ately as any other mind or spirit whatsoever distinct from our- 
selves. We may even assert that the existence of God is far more 
evidently perceived than the existence of men, because the effects 
of nature are infinitely more numerous and considerable than those 
ascribed to human agents. We need only open our eyes to see 
the Sovereign Lord of all things." (Principles of Human 
Knowledge, Krauth's edition, pp. 275, 276.) 



CHAPTER IV. 

ALL RELIGDNS USEFUL AND SPIRITUALLY MEDICINAL. 

The clergy, by a figure of speech, which represents what ought 
to be rather than what always is, have been called physicians of 
the soul, and religion has been viewed as a spiritual medicine. 
This idea is given us in the Scriptures. " Is there no balm in 
Gilead ? Is there no physician there ? Why, then, is not the 
health of the daughter of my people recovered ? " ( Jer. viii : 22.) 
If, then, souls in great numbers are diseased, and lost, and bewil- 
dered in the darkness, is it not because the physician is unskilful, 
and his medicine inefficient, even if it is not positively injurious "t 
Let us search for the true remedy, the spiritual specific. The 
minister is a spiritual physician, and has medicine for the mind in 
proportion as he reproduces in himself the life of Jesus the Christ, 
and teaches the truths which he proclaimed. 

All the various religions of the world are useful, and none of 
them could have been dropped out of human history and the gen- 
eral life of humanity without the race having suffered loss. They 
have all been factors in the progress and development of the 
human mind. They have all, in different degrees, accomplished 
the use of a spiritual medicine, in healing the hurts of the soul, 
and as preventives of something worse. The best medicine is that 
which prevents disease ; the next best that which cures it. Reli- 
gion serves both these uses to the soul. Every style of religious 
thought and life that has gained any considerable degree of cur- 

35 



36 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

rency in the world has met some deeply-felt want of the human 
spirit. It has often but imperfectly satisfied the instinctive crav- 
ings of the soul for spiritual nutriment, but its dry, and perhaps 
mouldy, crusts have preserved the divinest realm of the soul's life 
from starvation, and kept an absolute famine from its door. The 
great religions of the world have been the system of Confucius, 
Brahmanism, Buddhism, the system of Zoroaster, Judaism, Chris- 
tianity, and Mohammedism. Of more insignificant systems that 
have sprung out of these we need not speak. The most imper- 
fect of all these religions have been a spiritual nutriment and a 
mental medicine to many millions of souls. To those who cannot 
live directly and immediately from the Divine Being, to which 
state Christianity elevates the soul, all other religions have served 
at least as a nursing-bottle to prevent complete spiritual death, 
and to furnish the means of spiritual growth. They have been as 
a gentle breath of wind from the heavens to keep alive the Divine 
Promethean spark in human nature, and to prevent the smoking 
wick from going entirely out. "All these religions," says S. 
Baring-Gould,- " set themselves to respond to some craving of the 
head or heart of man, to satisfy some instinct, dimly felt and read ; 
and however various, however contradictory they were in their 
expression, they did fulfil their office in some sort, else they would 
never have lasted a day. They differ unquestionably, according 
to the stage of thought-development of the several peoples and 
nations which embraced them ; but their differences ought, if man 
is progressive, to be capable of arrangement in a series of pro- 
gressively advancing truths. In every religion of the world is to 
be found distorted or exaggerated some great truth, otherwise it 
would never have obtained foothold; every religious revolution has 
been the struggle of thought to gain another step in the ladder 
that reaches to heaven. ( Origin and Development of Religious 
Thought, Vol. 2, p. 9.) 

The Christian religion, as a medicine and a nutriment to the 
spiritual life of man, has the advantage, in one respect, over all 
others, — that it is in its nature eclectic. It is not in its spirit 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 37 

exclusive but is inclusive of that which is good and true in them 
all. Jesus defines the Word of God to he truth. It is the totality 
of all truth. So far as the saerecl books of the different nations 
contain and record any spiritual truth, they are the Word of God, 
or a manifestation of the Logos, — "the light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world." The Logos, or Word, is the liv 
ing principle of them all, and without it they could have had no 
permanent hold upon the souls of men, for " in it is life, and the life 
is the light of men." Christianity has in its spirit and teachings 
the elements of universality, and thus may properly be called the 
natural religion, or the religion of humanity, while other systems 
are adapted only to particular peoples or races. As one has said, 
" That which excludes or shuts out is not so great as that which 
takes in and receives. So Christianity has received into itself all 
the good of many systems, — the philosophy and arts of Greece, the 
laws of Rome, the mysticism of India, the monotheism of the Jews, 
the triad of Egypt, the war between good and evil taught by 
Zoroaster, the reverence for ancestors, and the conservatism of 
China, and the Scandinavian faith in liberty and progress. All 
the prophets, since the world began, and all the civilizations of the 
past, have, like the wise men of the east, brought their gifts to the 
infant Messiah. There is in this wonderful religion the power of 
assimilating to itself all that is true and good everywhere. It is 
like the sea, into which all rivers run, and yet is never full." 
(Lecture by James Freeman Clarke on Essentials and Non-Essen- 
tials in Religion, .) 

Jesus left no written creed, no unalterable system of ecclesias- 
tical polity, and no fixed forms of external worship. Everything 
was left to be unfolded by the Spirit that was promised, the Para- 
clete that was to lead into all truth and duty. The Christian 
system is constructed on the principle of progress, and thus bears 
the mark of Divinity, and it cannot but administer to the healthy 
growth of all who receive it in its true spirit. Once in the soul, it 
is like the mustard grain that develops into a tree, or like a Divine 
leaven that transforms the whole nature. A truly catholic system 



33 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

that receives into itself all that is of permanent value in the 
world's science, philosophy, and religion, and that stimulates the 
growth of all that is good and true in the souls of men, must have 
a spiritually sanative efficiency. It is God's "saving health," 
which the prophet prayed might be known among all nations. 
(Ps. lxvii: 2.) It is like the Apocalyptic tree of life, whoso 
roots drew fresh nutriment from the river of life, on the banks of 
which it stood ; its fruit is ever fresh and new, and the leaves of the 
tree are for the healing of the nations. (Rev. xxii: 1, 2.) This 
religion is everywhere in the Scriptures represented as a spiritual 
medicine ; and Jesus the Christ, as the founder and present life 
of the best system of religion the world ever saw, rightfully claims 
to be the Great Physician, a title the Church in all the centuries 
has given him. 

In the infancy of the race, and in the earliest ages of human 
history, the sanative value of religion was fully recognized. Man- 
kind were then more in a state of nature, and governed by 
instinct and intuition. The priests were the only physicians, and 
the temples were the place of cure, — a sort of spiritual pharmacy 
where the body was affected and healed through the mind. Civili- 
zation is in some sense an unnatural and artificial condition, as 
was taught by Housseau, and in it man is influenced more by 
reason, which is a far more imperfect guide than instinct. But we 
must be converted and become as little children before we can 
enter the kingdom of the heavens, or come into the closest sympa- 
thetic relations with the general sphere of life and light in the 
world above. When the religion of the Christ is divorced from 
all the shams and counterfeits that pass current for it, and is 
pruned of all that a priestly ecclesiasticism has grafted into it, and 
fit becomes what it was in its founder, a sympathetic union with 
the living God and the ever-present angel-world, it will be the 
power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation to body and 
soul. 






CHAPTER V. 

THE ESSENTIAL IDEA OP CHRISTIANITY AS UNFOLDED IN THE 
JOHANNEAN GOSPEL. 

The fundamental ideas of all possible religions, so far as they 
are expressed by an intellectual belief or creed, seem to be the 
common possession of mankind. The radical elements of all relig- 
ious belief, the essential faith of the universal church, which is 
older than Christianity, appear to have become a part of the original 
dowry of the human soul, and to have been deeply impressed upon 
the spiritual nature of man. St. Augustine, under the mistake 
that Christianity is a creed, affirms that " what is now called the 
Christian religion has existed among the ancients, and was not 
absent from the beginning of the race until Christ came in the 
flesh; from which time the true religion which existed already 
began to be called Christian. (Augustine, Reir. I, 13.) Relig- 
ion has existed in all ages of the world, and always will exist as 
long as human nature remains the same. There is no absolutely 
new religion since the commencement of human history. There 
has been a singular pertinacity in the hold which the fundamental 
ideas of religion have had upon the human mind. In Christianity 
we behold the highest exhibition of religious life, and development 
of religious thought, which have sprung out of the nature of man 
according to the law of spiritual evolution. But it is not unrea- 
sonable to suppose that even Christianity itself may undergo a still 
higher development than the world, has ever seen. Religion, as 

39 



40 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

represented by the Church in past ages, and by the Christian 
world of today, cannot be accepted as a finality. From the fruit- 
ful womb of the past will be born a still higher style of religious 
consciousness and spiritual life than the Church has ever realized 
in the brightest ages of its history. 

The following remarks of Max Miiller in relation to religion as 
an intellectual belief seem to me eminently true, and justified by 
the history of the human mind : " The elements and roots of relig- 
ion are seen as far back as we can trace the history of man ; and 
the history of religion, like that of language, shows us a succession 
of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition 
of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a 
divine government of the world, a distinction between good and 
evil, and a hope of a better life, — these are the radical elements 
of all religions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and 
again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend 
again and again to their perfect form." (Ussays on the Science of 
Religion, p. 10.) 

An examination of all the great religions of the world will 
clearly show that the most vital articles of faith and rules of life 
are the common property and inheritance of mankind, and they 
must have come from a common source, — a Divine inspiration, a 
radiation from the living Word, the light of life, the eternal 
Logos. Even the Christ himself is more a principle than a per- 
son, — not that we doubt the historic reality of his life, but wo 
affirm that he was an embodiment of the Word, that found in him 
an organ of commmunication with mankind, and the Word is the 
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 

Justin Martyr ( A.D. 139), in his Apology, uses this language : 
" One article of our faith then is that Christ is the first begotten 
of God, and we have already proved him to be the very Logos 
(or universal source of light and reason) of which mankind are 
all partakers, and therefore those who lived according to the Logos 
are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass with you for 
atheists." The Logos, or Word, which is an emanation of the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 41 

Divine Intellect to the receptive mind, is the primal source of all 
truth and the fountain of all mental illumination. Inspiration is not 
confined to the writers of the Old and New Testaments, but has 
been enjoyed by mankind in every age of the world, and in every 
clime where the life of an omnipresent God is felt. Clement of 
Alexandria goes so far as to affirm that " It is clear that the same 
God to whom we owe the Old and New Testaments gave also to 
the Greeks their Greek Philosophy, by which the Almighty is 
glorified (or his thoughts made known) among the Greeks.' , 
(Stomata, Lib. VI, Cap. V.) 

There is a sacred and divine element in all religions that ought 
to command our respect ; for in no age of the world has man 
ever been sundered from the Divine Mind and the illuminating 
Word that goes forth from Him. There has been, and still is, a 
secret yearning of the scul after Him who is the central point of 
our existence, and he has responded to this instinctive craving by 
giving life and light to men, as the sun pours its vitalizing beams 
into the flower that turns towards him. All souls, if they could 
express themselves in language, would say in the words of David, 
who speaks for us all, " As the heart panteth after the water 
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, God. My soul thirsteth 
for God, for the living God." (Ps. xlii: 1, 2.) Or, in the 
equally expressive language of one of the hymns of the Vedas, 
" Yearning for Him, the Far-Seeing, my thoughts move onwards, as 
kine move to their pastures." 

Christianity, or the system of Christ, differs from all other relig- 
ions in making the union of man with God a more practica* 
reality, and not a mere speculative hypothesis. In the Gospel of 
John we have the best presentation of the ideas of Christ and the 
essential nature of Christianity. The preface which exhibits the 
doctrine of the Logos, or Word, the Light and the Life communi- 
cable directly to men's souls, is to be taken as the essence, the 
fixed standing-ground of Jesus the Christ, in all his discourses and 
teaching. It is the spirit, the innermost root, of the whole doc- 
trine and philosophy of Jesus. The other Gospels contain a some- 



42 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

what dry chronicle of the doings of the Christ, — especially is this 
true of the first and second, — and of his conversations with the 
sensuous multitude, in which he brings down celestial truth 
veiled in parabolical representations, so that some spark of its 
heavenly fire might reach and animate their carnal minds. The 
Gospels of Matthew and Mark push the miracles of Jesus into 
prominence, which are of secondary importance. A miracle, in 
the ordinary theological use of the term, as an event outside of the 
ordinary laws of nature, can by no possibility be made to prove 
anything but itself. It is an isolated fact, standing alone, and 
having no fixed connection with the uniform mode of the Divine 
procedure. A doctrine that requires a miracle to prove it is not 
true. There is a natural adaptation of the mind of man to the 
reception of all real truth. Spiritual truth requires no external 
evidence, nor does it admit of it. It shines by its own inherent, 
Divine light. It is axiomatic, or self-evident, for you can find noth- 
ing clearer than itself with which to construct an argument to 
prove it. It is very generally supposed that John had the writ- 
ings of the other evangelists before him, and only designed to sup- 
ply what they had omitted. It is thought to be the supplement- 
ary Gospel. "If that is the case," as Fichte has said, "then in 
our opinion the supplement is the best part of the whole, and 
John's predecessors had passed over that precisely which was of 
essential importance." ( Way Toward the Blessed Life, Lecture 

vi.) 

The conscious realization of a life in God, and not as a specu- 
lative thesis to be argued and disputed, is the fundamental thought 
in the system taught by the Christ, — a union with God so com- 
plete in every department of our being that we can say : " The 
Father is in me and I am in the Father," and "I and my Father 
are one." A Christian Pantheism which does not destroy the 
individuality of man, nor separate God from the universe which 
he continually creates out of Himself, nor sunder Him from the 
activities of the human soul by the intervention of second causes, 
is the highest development of religious thought. An intuitive per- 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 43 

ception of the unity of the human with the Divine existence is the 
highest attainable spiritual intelligence, and one which raises man 
above disease and the possibility of death. Before Jesus, this 
knowledge had nowhere existed ; and through the dreary, dismal 
centuries of the history of the Church, it has been covered with a 
deep layer of externalism, and well nigh lost sight of. But a 
great original truth has a Divine vitality in it, and cannot die, 
because it becomes a part of the life of God in the soul of man. 

Such was the conjunction of Jesus the Christ with the Deity 
that a sympathetic union with him brings us into a receptive rela- 
tion with the Eternal God and his Life. At every moment of 
time, he who is thus linked to the Godhead comes into a present 
possession of Eternity, and lives everlasting life. 

The life of Jesus has been viewed by the Christian world as an 
unattainable ideal of a perfect human development, after which we 
should strive, but with no hope of reaching the goal towards which 
we were to run, or of hitting the mark at which we are expected 
to aim. His character and activity are presented to us by the 
Church as an example having the force of a moral law, and yet we 
are told that they lie beyond the possibility of a full realization. 
This is thought to be especially so as to his union with God, his 
perfect conquest of evil, and his power over diseases of mind and 
body. In consequence of this view, the Church has come so far 
short of the true Christian standard, for men will make but a 
feeble, sickly effort — a mere pretence to exertion — in aiming at 
the impossible, and in seeking for what is deemed unattainable. 
But a slight glance at the teaching of the Christ will convince us 
how far this doctrine — which was at the same time the result as 
well as the cause of the spiritual poverty of the Church — was 
from the ideas of him who introduced Christianity into the world, 
not as a speculative metaphysical system, but as a practical relig- 
ion and attainable state. To follow Christ, that is, to reproduce 
his life and experience, was made by him the essential condition 
of discipleship. (Mat. xvi : 24.) Every true disciple or scholar 
was expected to be a repetition of the Master, and not a faint and 



44 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE 

unrecognizable imitation or caricature of him. Wherever Christ 
stood was one greater than the temple of Solomon. (Mat. xii : 6.) 
So every human body was made to be a living temple of God, as 
was the personality of Jesus. 

That the union of God with Jesus is something unattainable by 
the soul of man is contradicted by the prayer of Christ (John 
xvii: 21-23), where he prays that all his disciples in every age 
might be one with God, as he and the Father were one. The 
works that he performed, which have been called miracles by an 
unauthorized substitution of a word of Latin origin for the Greek 
term employed in the Gospels, were to be repeated by his follow- 
ers. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the 
works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these 
shall he do, because I go to my Father." (John xiv: 12.) In 
proportion as a man is consciously united to God, he comes into 
conjunction with the central Life and Power of the universe, and a 
Divine energy will burst forth from him, and exhibit itself in works 
of healing the souls and bodies of men. An individual soul in a 
state of union with God, and with its natural powers augmented , 
and reinforced by a conjunction with the Central Life, will expend 
its activity in doing the works of God, as naturally as water 
descends from a higher to a lower level. It is a belief that has 
been more or less current in the world that one person may be con- 
trolled by another, and the phenomena of animal magnetism has 
proved it. When a spirit out of the body takes possession of one 
in the flesh it is called obsession. This has been witnessed in all 
ages of the world, and was common in the time of Jesus. But it 
is self-evident that we may be influenced by a good as well as by a 
bad spirit. The union of the soul with God as a practical reality is 
the central idea of Christianity. The true Christian is one who is 
obsessed of God, if we might be allowed to use the term in that sense, 
and he acts from an inward Divine impulse in resisting evil and 
doing good. As Paul expresses it, " he is strengthened with might 
by God's spirit in the inner man, and is filled with all the fullness of 
God, and is thus strong in the Lord and in the power of hi3 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 45 

might." (Eph. iii: 16, 19. Eph. vi: 10.) "Nearer, my God 
to Tliee " is the song that leads to a higher wisdom and to a power 
from above as surely as the Marseillaise hymn nerved the arm to 
victory in the straggle for freedom. 

Jesus introduced into the current of the world's thought, from 
which it had disappeared, the idea of the nearness of a higher 
realm of being which he calls " The kingdom of the heavens," — 
an orderly world of spirit-life that is intermingled with this, and 
that acts and reacts upon it. That higher world does not merely 
border on this, it is everywhere present in this. It was one of the 
aims of the life of Jesus to bring the two realms of life, that are 
not separated by distance of space, into conscious contact. It was 
the key note of his preaching. " Know ye that the kingdom or 
God is nigh at hand." (Luke xxi: 31.) In the Church tke 
moral force of this primitive Christian idea has been well nigh 
lost sight of, but will again be restored. An ever-present spiritual 
realm, with God as its Central Life, is being interfused with this 
world, as the light of the sun is mingled with the darkness at break 
of day. It is coming into available nearness to men's souls, as a 
source of inspiration to a higher knowledge and nobler deeds. A 
religious or scientific system that leaves this out becomes like an 
ocean without water. In the mud at the bottom the mind may 
find some intellectual treasures, but they are only relics from the 
wreck of higher truths. Materialism, in religion or science, can never 
satisfy the soul of man any more than the husks that the swine did 
eat could the belly of the prodigal son. The ancient Persian Magi, 
and the Chaldeans, who represent the creed of an older civiliza- 
tion, believed, according to Cudworth, that there was a certain 
vital sympathy between the superior and lower orders of being. 
This is demonstrably true by psychometry. Communion with 
God involves communion with the angel-world, for there is a com- 
mon Life that connects all existences in one chain of being. 

On this subject Kant remarks: "I confess I am much inclined 
to assert the existence of immaterial beings in this world, and to 
class my soul itself in the catalogue of these beings." 



46 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

" We can imagine the possibility of the existence of immaterial 
beings without the fear of being refuted, though, at the same time, 
without the hope of being able to demonstrate their existence by 
reason. Such spiritual beings would exist in space, and the lat- 
ter notwithstanding would remain penetrable for material beings, 
because their presence would imply an acting power in space, but 
not unfitting of it, i.e., a resistance causing solidity." 

" It is, therefore, as good as demonstrated, or it could easily be 
proved, if we were to enter into it at some length, or, better still, 
it will be proved in the future — I do not know where and when — 
that also in this life the human soul stands in an indissoluble com- 
munion with all the immaterial beings of the spiritual world ; that 
it produces effects in them, and in exchange receives impressions 
from them, without, however, becoming humanly conscious of them 
so long as all stands well." {Kant's Works, Vol. VII., p. 32.) 






CHAPTER VL 

THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE MATERIAL WORLD AND IN THB 
REALM OF MIND. 

" As science progresses, it draws nearer in all its forms to the 
proof of the spiritual origin of force, that is, of the Divine imma- 
nence in natural law." {Biology, by Joseph Cook, p. 320.) If 
matter is entirely passive, or, in other words, if inertia is one of its 
essential properties, — and this is a fundamental principle in phys- 
ical science,— then it cannot be self-moved. Its condition always 
sustains to some power, distinct from itself, the relation of an effect 
to a cause. It requires a force, outside of itself, or at least some- 
thing that does not belong to itself, to generate its movements and 
all the phenomena it exhibits. The material universe is the per- 
iphery of a circle of which God is the living Centre, and nothing 
occurs in the boundary that does not by a creative and controlling 
influence proceed from the inmost. 

God was not transiently present in nature, that is, in a mere crea- 
tive moment, and has now left the world in a state of orphanage, 
bereft of a deific influence and care, but he is immanent in nature 
or permanently present, as Spinoza affirmed. On this subject 
extremes meet. Here Joseph Cook and Theodore Parker find a 
divine point of union in their apparently antagonistic systems. 
The latter affirms that God is not idly but actively present in nat- 
ure,— that he penetrates and pervades the world as a spiritual 
force. " Our Father worketh hitherto, and for this reason nature 

47 



48 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

works, and so has done since its creation. There is no spot on 
which the hoary foot of Time has trod that is not instinct with 
God's activity. He is the ground of nature, — what is permanent 
in the passing, what is real in the apparent. All nature is but 
an exhibition of God to the senses, — the veil of smoke on which his 
shadow falls, the dew drop in which the heaven of his omnipotence 
is poorly imaged. Endless and without beginning flows forth the 
stream of Divine influence that encircles and possesses the all of 
things." {Discourse on Hatters Pertaining to Religion, p. 161.) 

There is truth in the old theory of an Animus Mundi, or Soul 
of the World, for God sustains to the material universe a relation 
analogous to that of mind and body in man. Ail of nature's 
action is God's action, and the uniform mode of the Divine activity 
and procedure is what we call a law of nature. All theological 
systems, and all religious philosophies, meet here and embrace, — 
Spinoza and Cudworth, Hegel and Schleiermacher, Berkeley and 
Locke, Renan and Neander, Fichte and Tholuch, Parker and 
Channing. They all believe, however cautiously they may express 
it, that nature is an apparition of the Deity, — God in a mask. 
This gives to this great truth, that God is the only Reality of 
nature, the character of an intuition, or inspiration, which means 
the same. 

But is it reasonable to suppose that God is everywhere present 
in matter and not in mind or spirit? The realm of mind is one 
degree nearer to the Central Life than matter, and it is here that 
the Divine Presence is most clearly seen, and His activity dis- 
played. If He is present in matter, and is the hidden force in all its 
phenomena, then the law of analogy would require his immanence 
in spirit also. If He is immanently active, and thus totally and 
essentially present in every material atom of creation, then He is 
universally present in all mind. Even fetishism, or the adoration 
of external objects, rises to the dignity of being, in some measure, 
an instinctive acknowledging of a Divine Presence in nature, as in 
the worship of idols, the sun and moon, rivers and mountains, or 
the worship of the host, or bread of the Sacrament, in the Catholic 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 49 

Church. The external object was viewed by the better class as a 
symbol or manifestation of a Divine power in nature, although 
this intellectual elevation was seldom reached, but only dimly fell 
by the multitude. But God's ubiquity is not confined to mat- 
ter and to space, but can be predicated of all spirit as well. As 
His presence in what we call nature, not as a slumbering, inopera- 
tive and latent power, but as an active force, is the basis of His 
direct influence there, so His presence in the soul is the foundation 
of our belief in His constant influence there, and is the source of a 
never-ceasing inspiration. He acts through the natural powers of 
the soul, which are perpetually derived from Him, — instinct, 
reason, conscience, and intuition. " Through these channels, and 
by means of a law, certain, regular, and universal as gravitation, 
God inspires men, and makes revelation of truth, for is not truth 
as much a phenomenon of God as the motion of matter ? There- 
fore, if God be omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no 
miracle, but a regular mode of God's action on conscious spirit, as 
is gravitation on unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescen- 
sion of God, but a universal uplifting of man. To obtain a knowl- 
edge of duty, a man is not sent away outside of himself to ancient 
documents for the only rule of faith and practice; the Word is 
very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this Word he is to try all 
documents whatever. Inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is not 
limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, and 
Mohammedans, but is coextensive with the race. As God fills all 
space, so all spirit; as He influences and constrains unconscious 
and necessitated matter, so He inspires and helps free and con- 
scious man." (Parker's Discourse of Matters Pertaining to 
Religion, p. 203.) 

The above is the view of one of the most profoundly religious 
men of modern times, however much he was misunderstood. In a 
certain sense mind is no more self moved than matter. There is 
an inertia of spirit as well as of matter. From the possession of 
tree will mind has the appearance of an automatic activity, but 
every thought, or, at least, the ability to think, and every voli- 



50 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

tional effort requires a Divine aid as much as the movement of a 
planet in the heavens, or the motion of my arm. Paul declares 
that there is no such thing as self-origiuated thought, — that we 
are not ahle to think anything of ourselves, but all our sufficiency 
is of God. (2 Cor. iii : 5.) All thought, and the advent of an 
idea to the soul, are in reality an inspiration. What we call the 
Biblo, or, as it means, the Book, is not God's last word, or a fare- 
well, to the human soul when He was about to retire to an unap- 
proachable remoteness and unhailing distance, and to withdraw 
Himself from the minds of men into the silent and unfathomable 
depths of His own being. The Divine Life can never become 
dormant and latent, or pass into a comatose state. His life is 
action, and His activity is the only life. God is as near to our 
souls as the material world is to our bodies. Our being forever 
touches His, and separation from Him would be annihilation. 
Our life is a circle, or, at least, a point somewhere in the inclosure 
of the Divine Being, and we are always in speaking nearness to 
Him and He to us. The voice of God and the Word that came 
to the prophets was never designed to be a forgotten sound in the 
soul of man, — a thing of history, a Divine phenomenon of a past 
age, but a reality of the eternal now, the ever-living present. The 
Word of the Lord, which was the primitive Hebrew form of 
expressing the creative will and thought of God, and the communi- 
cation of His thoughts to men by a direct impression upon the 
mind, was never intended to be like a repeating echo that was tc 
expend its audible force in a few brief centuries, and then die 
away in an eternal silence, but man, as an image of God, must 
forever, in a finite measure, repeat the thoughts and activity of 
the Divine Mind. We cannot live or exhibit any of the phe- 
nomena of life without God, and He cannot ex-ist without us. Our 
life is bound up in His, and a constant inspiration from the pri- 
mal source of being follows from the necessary relation of the per- 
petually-created to an ever-present Creator. To the truly spirit- 
ual mind an atheist, or a man or thing without God, is an impossi- 
ble conception. It would be like a something or a somewhat pro- 



TIIE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 51 

ceeding from nothing, or an effect without a cause, — a contradic- 
tion of the intuitive truth, ex nihilo nihil jit. The highest func- 
tions of the human mind, such as reason, instinct, intuition, are a 
constant inspiration of God, and there is nothing of permanent 
value in the whole realm of literature and art, in law and medi- 
cine, that is not an expression of God's thought and feeling,— the 
laws of Minos, of Moses, of Numa, Lycurgus, and Khadamanthus 
the poetry of Homer and Isaiah, the works of Phidias and 
Michael Angelo, the patriotism of Washington and Lincoln, and the 
philosophy of Socrates and Plato, and the religious systems of Con- 
fucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, and even Mohammed. This is 
only reducing the religious creed of all men to a fact. It is mak- 
ing real what men pray for, if they pray at all. For it is as natu- 
ral for the religious nature of man to pray for a Divine influence 
and aid as it is to breathe. A prayer that does not spring from a 
desire and expectation of receiving an influx from God is a solemn 
mockery, a cloud without rain, a well without water. But we 
should never forget that health or wholeness, as the word signifies, 
the perfect union of a sound mind with a body in correspondence 
with it, is a Divine gift, an inspiration of God. It is, as the 
devout Scougal would call it, " the life of God in the soul of 
man." In fact, God and man cannot be separated, but it lies 
within the compass of that apparently self-acting power we call free- 
will, or faith, or imagination, to give intensity to our conscious- 
ness of this truth, and to make it available as a redemptive influ- 
ence and a spiritual medicine. 



CHAPTER, VH. 

SAVING AND HEALING GRACE, OR MEDICINE A SACRAMENT. 

In the foregoing chapter it has been shown that God is present 
in nature and is the primal source of all its active powers. The 
material world and all it contains is a perpetual manifestation 
and revelation of the Divine Being, both in its greatest and least 
parts and particles. Paul teaches that "the invisible things of 
Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under- 
stood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and 
Godhead. " (Rom. i : 20.) All the forces of nature are but 
manifestations of a Divine energy. This is true of the action of 
medicines on the human body. Hence all curative agents are of 
the nature of a sacrament or " means of grace." 

There is an underlying truth in the Church dogma of grace, 
though limited in its application. Grace has been denned to mean 
favor. In the religious parlance of the Church, it is made to sig- 
nify an unmerited favor or gift. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
Paul, in a single verse, gives us the whole doctrine of grace. " By 
grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves : 
it is the gift of God." (Eph. ii : 8.) The idea of grace, as it 
exists in the mind of most people independent of all theological 
definitions, is that of a help, or influence, imparted to us directly 
or indirectly through means, from the Divine Being. It is an 
augmentation of our powers by a force given us from our vital 
relation to God, so that we are able to do, or to bear, what other- 
wise would be impossible to us. By grace we are saved or healed 
morally and physically. 52 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 53 

Grace, as a Divine principle in nature, and as a spiritually sana- 
tive force, may be imparted to us directly from God, or through some 
intervening medicine. That it may come to us through more exter- 
na] means is the idea on which the doctrine of the efficacy of the 
f-acraments is based. But it is a mental law that it is only through 
faith that any benefit is received from these. In the Catholic 
Church extreme unction has often turned out a means of cure. 
But, without faith, a few drops of oil has no healing efficacy, and 
one piece of bread, or a few drops of water or wine, is no better than 
any other bread or water or wine. If our faith in God and the 
universality of His life — the idea that we live in God and that 
everything else has its being in Him — is to us a religious con- 
sciousness and a certainty, then we have no need of any sacra- 
mental or intervening agency between us and Him. Crutches are 
of no use, but rather a hindrance, to one who is not lame. The 
Divine Love and Life need not to be materialized, or come to us 
through any outward forms of manifestation. To the ignorant 
Catholic, or the feeble-minded Protestant, the sacramental elements, 
the bread and the wine, represent the presence of God, and are the 
visible medium through which saving grace is imparted. The 
more active their faith in these outward symbols the more bene- 
fit they receive from them, for they are saved by a grace of which 
they are made rcceptible through faith. It is the same with medi- 
cine ; for if one cannot come into a direct communication with the 
Infinite Life, let him connect himself with the Divine Being and 
his " saving health " by means of visible and material remedies. 
It matters little what they are, provided they bring the patient 
into communicative contact with the primal source of life and 
health. The sacraments are supposed to be a spiritual medicine, 
or a means through which the Divine Life is made communicable 
to us. In them, as in all medicinal preparations, God descends 
from the unapproachable, and, to many minds, the inconceivable 
region of the absolute, to the lowest depths of the spiritual needs 
f men. They are an exteriorization of the Love and Life of God. 
md thus it brings them within the grasp of the sensuous mind, so 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 



that they may become appropriable to that range of the intellect. 
But to the spiritually enlightened mind God is everywhere, and 
consequently in all things, and there is not a point in the -wide 
universe where we may not come into communicative contact with 
the whole undivided and indivisible Deity. His presence is not 
recognized by the spiritual mind only in the sacramental elements 
of bread and wine, but everything becomes a sacrament of good 
and means of saving grace to us. It is the office of Christianity 
to make general what has been considered as limited and partial. 
Thus the sacraments are not the only point in the material universe 
where man can meet God. It is better to meet Him there than 
nowwhere. Every material thing may be to us as God made visi- 
ble and accessible, and consequently as a sacrament, — the food we 
eat, the water wo drink, the medicine we take, every object of 
beauty and grandeur around us, the mountain summit, the flowing 
stream, the dew-gemmed flower, the waving field of grain, the 
summer cloud, the morning song of the birds, the vernal shower, 
and the autumn leaf, — all these and many more are, or may be, 
sacraments to the soul and means of communion with God. 

As God is the only Life, everything that has any therapeutic 
value or healing influence is of the nature of a sacrament, — that 
is, it is the communication of a Divine saving grace through an 
external medium which in itself is of secondary importance. "We 
need the Divine help every moment, but never so consciously feel 
it as when sick and unhappy. And that through the medium of 
which the desired aid comes to us is to us a sacrament, let the 
remedial agency belong to whatever school of medicine it may. 

Protestantism reduces the sacraments to two ; but the Papal 
Church has been more liberal and given us seven channels through 
which a saving or spiritually healing grace may flow. But a genu- 
ine Christianity is Catholic in its spirit and nature, which, as the 
name primarily signifies, is that which is universal and inclu- 
sive, and is opposed to that which is particular and exclusive, and 
comprehends all that is good and true in every religion, past, pres- 
ent, and future. Its sacraments are not fixed at two or seven, hut 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 55 

are all those external things that are or can "be the means through 
which a spiritual aid and influence may come to us, and through 
which the feeble and ignorant may mount upward, as on a ladder, 
to communication with the Divine Life. 

In the light of this truth, it is easy to see that medicine is a sac- 
rament to those whose faith needs some external support on which 
to lean, and the more spiritual the remedy the more of a sacra- 
mental efficiency it has in it. For it is an eternal and necessary 
truth, that it is by grace or an impartation of living force from God 
that we are saved, and healed, and that comes to us through faith. 
Any remedial agency that places the sick in body or mind in vital 
communication with the Central Life is a holy sacrament and 
means of grace. The word sacrament (from sacr amentum) origin- 
ally signified the oath that a Roman soldier took of fidelity to the 
government, but has been employed in Christian literature as "an 
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," or influ- 
ence. All material things are only the outward expression or cor- 
ISSspondence of some spiritual reality or essence which represents it 
to the senses. In the case of a medicine, it is the spiritual essence 
of the drug that gives it all its curative value and its power over 
that dynamic disturbance which, according to the system of Hahne- 
mann, constitutes the disease for which it is given. This makes it 
of the nature of a sacrament. If a drug is not this, it has no thera- 
peutic efficacy. This gives to the administration of medicines a 
sacred character, and the real physician is elevated to the dignity 
of a priest, and even a vicar of God. As God is love, and, as 
Swedenborg taught a century ago, love is the life of man, all reme- 
dies administered by the hand of kindness, and are charged with its 
spirit, have an efficiency and spiritual power that they could not 
otherwise possess. They are, when viewed in the light of these 
truths, no longer like the goods and chattels that the merchant sells 
behind the counter, but they have a principle of spiritual life in 
them, and the physician executes the function of the priesthood in 
its divine reality. The ministerial and medical professions should 
never have come under the influence of the modern tendency to a 



56 TIIE DIVINE LAW OP CURB. 

division of labor, but should have remained one ; and the priest, as in 
the older civilizations, should have been the physician of both soul 
and body. It is in accordance with the usus loquendi of the New 
Testament, or usual mode of speaking, to employ the words to heal 
and to save as equivalent and interchangeable expressions. " The 
prayer of faith shall save (or heal) the sick." (James v : 15.) To 
the blind man, whom he restored to sight, Jesus said : " Thy faith 
hath saved thee." (Luke xviii : 42.) The Greek verb sozo, answer- 
ing to our English word to save, is usually rendered to heal or 
make whole. (See Mat. ix: 21, 22; Mark v: 23, 28, 34; Mark 
vi: 5G, and many other places.) A scheme of salvation that 
leaves out the restoration of the body to health, as is done in the 
churches of today, comes short of the primitive Christian idea, 
and brings the pulpit under the reproof of the prophet, that it heals 
the hurts of humanity slightly or in part only. ( Jer. vi : 14 ; Jer. 
viii: 11.) A religious system that sunders what God has joined 
together, and does not furnish a medicine for soul and body both, 
will be deprived of more than half its salutary influence. The 
Church should at once come back to the original Christian method. 
It is well known that no missionaries are more successful than 
those who combine with the preaching of the gospel a successful 
medical practice. 

The fundamental error in religion has been in separating God 
too much from nature. Nature, ^as the word means, is that winch 
is perpetually begotten and born of God, and is permanently 
attached to Him. There is not on one side a solitary God, and on 
the other an isolated universe, for the Creator is incessantly incar- 
nated in each of His creatures, and they become each in a degree 
manifestations of Him, and their life is His Life. According to 
tins, as Saisset has said, God sleeps, as it were, in the mineral, 
dreams in the animal, and comes to consciousness in man. The 
presence of God is not confined to the narrow limits of the holy of 
holies in the temple, where the Jewish anthropomorphism (or view 
of God as a man) located Plim on earth, nor to some distant 
world in the starry heavens, where the childish thought of the 



THE DiVINr, LAW OF CUKE. 57 

Church has placed Him. There is in all created things (what 
shall I call it?) a Divine internal virtue or essence. All things 
go forth from God into an outward expression, but never break 
away from Him, or lose their connection with Him. Under this 
view of the Divine Being and his Ex-istencc in nature, every com- 
mon bush is ablaze with God, as was that of Horeb to Moses; 
every mountain is as holy as Sinai ; every river as sacred as the 
Jordan ; and the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we 
breathe, and the medicine we take have in them the sanctity and 
virtue of a sacrament, and may be to us a means of grace. 



CHAPTER VIH. 

ORIGIN AND CONSERVATION OP LIFE-FORCE. 

It is now a well-established principle in philosophy that all life 
is a force, and it is equally certain to the intuitive reason that all 
force in the universe is a manifestation of some primal Life, some 
central living Power, call it by what name we may. We may 
consider it a fundamental truth that life is a spiritual force, and 
not, as formerly supposed, a fluid, but it is a force different from 
the ordinary forces of the physical universe. It is now admitted 
that all force is indestructible, though it may be changed into 
other forms of manifestation, and this constitutes the highest scien- 
tific evidence of the immortality of man. 

The grand source and central fountain of all physical energy is 
supposed to be the sun. Here is the origin of all motion on the globe 
we inhabit. Take that away, and universal darkness, stillness, and 
death would be the result in the physical world we inhabit. All 
the movements of nature would cease at once, the streams would 
no longer flow, the tides would come to a perpetual pause in their 
inward and outward motions, the successions of the seasons and 
the alternations of day and night would come to an end, and all 
the one hundred thousand species of plants would perish ; and 
Byron's dread picture of a sunless world, in his poem of Darkness, 
would be a realized fact and not a fancy. Scientific men have 
felt the need of some central spiritual power that should sustain 
the same relation to the souls of men that the sun holds to the 

58 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 59 

material world. On this subject Prof. Trowbridge remarks: 
"Looking, therefore, at the problem of life and mind from a 
purely scientific point of view, we seem to require a source from 
which can come the principle of life, and which can create moral and 
intellectual growth in suitable soil and under fitting conditions. 
In case of the energy derived from the sun's heat, we have a cycle 
of operations in which there is no annihilation of force. If we 
grant that there is a source of life and mind independent of mere 
chemical changes produced by the sun's heat, and if we adhere to 
the notion of the conservation of force applied to this principle of 
life and mind, wo are led to adopt the idea of a cycle of operations 
in which there is no annihilation of spiritual force. The doctrine 
of the existence of the spirit after physical death seems to me not 
to be foreign to the scientific ideas of the conservation of force, 
which have now obtained such complete supremacy in the science 
of physics ; or to the doctrines of Darwin, which are accepted by 
so large a body of eminent naturalists. Without the sun there 
would be an annihilation of force. When energy is dissipated, wo 
find the sun exalting it again by processes which we cannot com- 
pletely follow. The idea of a great source of life and mind, the pro- 
totype of our physical sun, which sets in motion a vast scheme for 
the survival of the fittest and the exaltation of energy in vast 
cycles, is not inconsistent with the doctrine of the New Testament, 
and seems to be required in a philosophical theory which shall 
endeavor to account for the differences in that great spiritual world 
which are continually suggested to the human mind by the various 
types of mental growth." (Popular Science Monthly, April, 
1877.) 

This primary and exhaustless source of life and spiritual energy 
we have in the sun of the spiritual world, as described by Sweden- 
borg in the treatise on the Divine Love and Wisdom. He affirms 
that the proximate emanation of the Divine Essence assumes to the 
inhabitants of that realm of life the form of a sun, and that it sus- 
tains the same creative relation to that world that our solar orb 
does to its planetary system. This is one of the original concep 



60 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

tions, or revelations, of Swedenborg, and which, under a modifica- 
tion of language, is being adopted by scientific men. The " solar 
radiance," and the " sun above the sun," which are favorite expres- 
sions of the Rev. Joseph Cook in his lectures on the relation of 
science and religion, are borrowed from the Scandinavian Seer. 
From this one source come forth all life and spiritual force, and 
all creations. No life can perish, because it is uncreated, and is 
eternally supplied from this central fountain. 

Can we have access to it, and come into voluntary receptive 
communication with it ? It is the source of all inspiration of life 
and light in the souls of men, and what is called the Word of the 
Lord that came to the prophets, and the Holy Spirit in the system 
of the Christ, are modifications of it. We see its most intense 
form of reception in the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, 
and in the shining of the face of Moses. In fact, we are never 
sundered from it, for it is to us " the light of life." If we can say 
with Whittier, 

" And all the windows of the soul 
I open to the sun," 

we may come into a conscious appropriation of its life and light. 

The existence of God and His ceaseless influence is as necessary in 
science and philosophy as it is in theology. Every scientist can 
say of science as Robespierre said of France : " If there is no God, 
we must make one ; France cannot do without God." Prof. 
Lionel S. Beal, one of the highest authorities in the use of the 
microscope in histology and physiology, in his " Theories of Vitality 
and Religious Thought," says, " that all vital power affects the 
molecules of matter, and makes them take up certain positions, and 
so arranges them that certain definite combinations shall take place. 
This vital power is capable of causing the particles it guides to be 
so arranged as to form at length complex, and it may be very 
elaborate, structures, performing the most delicate work, and in a 
most perfect manner." All this, as I. H. Fichte has demonstrated, 
is effected by an unconscious, or, as he calls it, a preconscious, men- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 61 

tal action, a subject we shall have occasion to discuss hereafter. 
Beal affirms that " mental action is the highest manifestation of vital 
power of which we have any cognizance," and that it is reasonable 
to conceive that the highest form of vital power of which we have 
knowledge and experience is in some way closely related to the 
Deity. ( Theories of Vitality and Religious Thought, pp. 92, 97.) 
This is only a reproduction in other language of the doctrine of 
Paul that " in Him we live, and move, and have our being." 

One thing is certain that the vital functions are performed with- 
out any conscious, volitional effort on our part. A state of uncon- 
sciousness and of perfect passivity is not necessarily, and as a mat- 
ter of fact, a cessation of existence and of mental activity. We 
still live. In a dreamless sleep, and in a trance, we are uncon- 
scious of the external world, and have no voluntary control of the 
bodily organs, and yet we are alive. The spiritual principle and 
force that animate the body, and are the spring of all its vital 
activity, still move the physiological machinery with undeviating 
regularity, and with an unerring intelligence. Something beside 
our own conscious intelligence and a vital activity not under the 
control of our individual will, a higher life in our personal exist- 
ence, must then reside within us, and there must be some power 
distinct from our volitions that executes these important functions. 
Call it by what name you please, — we will not dispute about words, 
— it will ultimately refer itself to our connection with the Divine 
Being, the common Life of the universe. 

The primary movements of the body, and those on which all 
others depend, viz., respiration and the action of the heart, are for 
the most part involuntary and unconscious movements, yet they 
take place according to a fixed law, and are under the guidance of 
intelligence. The force that creates and maintains these move- 
ments must lie in the preconscious region of the soul's activity, 
and this must be related most intimately to the Divine Life. It 
is the nature and property of spirit to produce motion, and of mat- 
ter to receive it. Dr. Darwin says, "lam ready to allow that 
the ultimate cause of all motion is immaterial, that is, God '' 
(^Zoonomia, Vol. I., Sec. 14.) 



62 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

It is a truth that science in the future will be compelled to 
recognize, that we live in God and He in us. Yet the more closely 
we are consciously united to God, the more real becomes our own 
life, and the more distinctly defined to our perception is our own 
individuality. For as God has life in Himself, so He gives to us 
to have life in ourselves. In His infinite love, and the exuberance 
of His goodness, He imparts life to us so freely and fully that it 
requires an effort to make it seem otherwise than a self-originated 
life of our own. 

Creation is a genesis, or begetting, and the life of the Creator is 
prolonged, extended, multiplied, and manifested in the beings that 
go forth from Him. The primary meaning of the word creation, 
in all languages, is that of an act of generation. It seems to be 
deeply imbedded in the consciousness of mankind that creation is 
a genesis or begetting. Hence the first book of the Pentateuch 
of Moses, though without a title in the Hebrew, was named by the 
Septuagint translators, Genesis, from yewaco, to procreate, because 
it was supposed to give an account of the creation of the world 
and of man. In the preface of the Johannean Gospel, where it is 
said that all things were created by the Word, or the Divine 
Thought, the verb is '/lvalue, to be born, as creation is repre- 
sented as a birth. The Hebiow bara signifies not only to create 
but primarily to bring forth, to give birth to. The Saxon word 
beget (from be and gctaii) signifies not only the generative act, but 
more literally to cause to exist. That the generating principle of 
creation, or that which causes all things to ex-Y&i, or come to a 
manifested being, is the Divine Word or Thought of God is 
clearly stated in the Scriptures. (Ps. xxxiii: 6; Johni: 3; 2 
Pet. iii: 5.) It is also recognized in common language in the 
use of the word conception. To conceive signifies not only the 
vitalizing of an ovarian germ, but also to form in the mind, or to 
think. In Pneumatology, or the science of spirit, when we have a 
sensation of an object, the idea which is awakened is called a ■per- 
ception. When the same object is presented to the mind in 
thought, it is denominated conception. It is then a spiritual gene- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUBE. G3 

sis, a mental procreation. By thought we beget it, that is, get it 
to be, or cause it to exist. But in both cases the thought is the 
inmost reality of the thing, and is all that of which the mind knows 
anything. For, as Plato taught, the only objects of knowledge are 
ideas. God conceived the world, or generated it from Himself, by 
thought, and a thought is never disconnected from the mind that 
thinks. When a thought assumes an outward form, so as to be 
conceivable by the mind, it is a word or thing, which, in the 
Hebrew language, are one and the same. Plato and Hegel both 
agree with Swedenborg in making the Word or Thought of God 
the verimost reality and the verimost essential in the universe, or, 
as the latter expresses it : " The very real itself or the very essen- 
tial itself of the universe" (Arcana Celestia, 5272), where the 
idea struggles to find an appropriate form of outward expression. 

The inmost ground of all beings and things is Divine. It is 
what is called in the first chapter of Genesis, and the first chapter 
of the Johannean Gospel, the beginning, the first principle, or 
proximate out-going of the Divine Life. This principle is the 
inner essence of all things, because they have the radix of 
their being in God. Their tap-root extends downward to the 
Divine Essence, and springs from it. Consequently, all souls, as 
to their inmost self, finding their immediate principle, beginning, 
or ground of existence in God are consubstantial with Him, and 
also with one another. In and from this first principle (hv a^rj) 
God created and ever creates the world and all that is in it ; or, as 
it is in the Latin Vulgate of the first verse of Genesis, in prin- 
cipio creavit Dens, in the beginning God created, which has no 
reference to time. He creates all things in this first principle by 
the Word, or expressed Thought of the Divine Mind. This Word, 
as it was represented by the Christ, is the beginning of the creation 
of God, or that which is the beginning and substance, or underly- 
ing reality, of all things. (Col. i: 15; Itev. iii : 14.) Because 
all things are manifestations of this one principle is the reason 
why ail are as one, and the state of the least effects the whole ; or 
as Whifetier, in his "Quaker of the Olden Time," says: — 



64 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 



" "With that deep insight which detects 
All great things in the small, 
He knows how each man's life affects 
The spiritual life of all." 



In the system of Hegel the underlying reality of all existence, 
or that from which all manifested being springs, is the Divine 
Reason. By him reason is viewed as substance as well as Infinite 
Power, underlying all the natural and spiritual life it originates, or 
that by which and in which all reality has its being and subsist- 
ence. It is the Infinite Energy of the universe; it is the infinite 
complex of things, their entire essence and truth, which amounts to 
about the same thing as Swedenborg's doctrine that God created all 
things by the Divine Truth. (See IlegeVs Philosophy of History, 
Bonn's edition, pp. 9, 10.) In the philosophy of Schopenhauer 
(in his great work, "World and Will,") this underlying prin- 
ciple of existence is Will, but will as a force unconscious of 
itself, and separate from a Divine personality, which makes it 
atheism, which he openly professes. By a misunderstanding of 
Buddhism, — which he accepts as the oldest and best religion, — 
his system is an idealism that leaves out God. For as there is 
in the universe only the All and the nothing, if you subtract God 
from it there is nothing left. 

In Hartmann's philosophy, he gives to the force that originates 
and actuates the world and all things in it the indefinite name of 
the Unconscious. This includes both will and intelligence, but 
acting blindly, and, as it seems, separate from personality, which is 
a contradiction and impossibility. In the system which I adopt, the 
Logos, the Word, the Divine Thought, is that which creates and 
governs all things, and the universe as a whole, and in its parts is 
a manifestation of it, and a permanent expression of it. In a 
way analogous to this, when an artist thinks or imagines a land- 
scape, it is an ideal and real creation of it, and lacks only a per- 
manent expression on the plane of sense which God gives to his 
creative thoughts. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TEE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OP HEALTH AND DISEASE. 

Everywhere in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures our relation 
to God is represented as a vital one. This idea was not pushed to 
such prominence in the Greek philosophy, but is one which the 
science of the present age tends to demonstrate. That there is a 
God is a necessity of thought, for we cannot conceive of the finite 
without at the same time having the idea of the infinite. Time 
limited leads to the conception of unlimited time, or endless dura- 
tion. Space bounded and definite suggests the thought of boundless 
space or immensity. The same is true of wisdom, goodness, and 
power. Thus, as Cousin, the French metaphysician, shows, the finite 
necessarily leads to the conception of the Infinite. Thus, the preva- 
lence of theoretical atheism to any great extent will be an impossi- 
bility. The existence of God is a necessary truth and a fundamental 
verity of the intuitive reason. But the fundamental idea of Christ- 
ianity as a system of religious philosophy, and one that distin- 
guishes it from all other religions of the world, is the prominence 
it gives to the consciousness of God within, the incarnation of God 
in man, the indwelling of the Deity in the inmost depths of the 
human soul. But He does not reside there as an inoperative 
principle, or as a metaphysical idea, but as the hidden spring of 
our life, the very ground of our existence, so that without this con- 
nection of our souls with Him, onr own existence, since it is not 
eternal and self-derived, and all our activity of body and mind, 

65 



68 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE 

would be an impossibility. Paul, as the representative of Christ- 
ianity, affirms before the supreme court of the Athenian Republic 
that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being, and that it is 
He who giveth life, and breath, and all things ; " and he quotes the 
poet Aratus to show that this is a truth recognized by the religious 
consciousness of the world : " for we are all His offspring." We 
are children of God, that is, our existence is derived or springs 
from His, and is continued or perpetuated by our filial relation to 
Him. (Actsxvii: 25-28.) 

This must have sounded strange to those who looked for God 
in something without, and not in the depths of their own being. In 
the city of Athens there were thirty thousand idols, and, as one 
has said, it was easier to find a god than a man, but it was only 
an intensifying of the tendency to externalize the Deity, which we 
see even at the present time. 

The doctrine of Paul was drawn from the Jewish Scriptures, or, 
at least, is in perfect harmony with their teaching. In one of the 
Psalms of David there is a passage equally explicit as that of the 
utterance of Paul before the Areopagus : " With Thee is the fount- 
ain of life; in Thy light shall we see light." (Ps. xxxvi: 9.) 
Here our life is viewed as a stream that issues from the inexhausti- 
ble fount of being, and consequently having no independent exist- 
ence of its own. 

Under a clear apprehension of the intuitive truth that life, and 
consequently health, which is only a mode of life, are from the 
primal source of being, the inspired Hebrew poet prays that God's 
"saving health" — an expression full of meaning — might be 
known among all nations. (Ps. lxvii: 2.) Under the influence of 
an influx of life and light from the world above, the Psalmist was 
raised out of the plane of Jewish selfishness and exclusiveness, and 
prays that an emanation of the Divine Life, as an efficient spiritual 
remedy for all disturbed conditions of mind and body, should 
become universally known. The moment a man comes into a sym- 
pathetic conjunction with God he feels as God does, and is actu- 
ated by an irrepressible desire to impart all possible good to 
others. 






THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 67 

David, in one of his Psalms, says of the man who considers the 
poor, — that is, of one who is of use in the world as an organ of 
expressing the Divine Love, — that the Lord will preserve him and 
keep him alive. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of 
languishing, and will make, or, according to the marginal and 
more literal rendering, will turn, all his bed in his sickness, and 
will not deliver him over to his enemies, or those spiritual innu- 
enees that cause the • disease. (Ps. xlii: 1-3.) In the Jewish 
religious consciousness the idea that life and health were from 
God seems to have been deeply rooted. This was often expressed 
in the prophetic state, or when the mind was under the influence 
of a Divine afflatus. Jeremiah prays, " Heal me, Lord, and I 
shall be healed: save me, and I shall be saved." (Jer. xvii: 14.) 
In this passage we see the parallelism between the words " save " 
and "heal," which are identical in meaning. In that age of sim- 
ple, child-like faith medical science had taught mankind no better 
way for the cure of disease than to apply directly to the source of 
all life for relief. It might have been as well for the world in 
this respect if it had remained in that stage of blissful and health- 
ful ignorance. The trade in drugs would have been less, and the 
public health improved thereby. 

All genuine poetry is an inspiration, and its tendency is to bring 
the soul nearer to God. It gives prominence to that which is 
ideal and divine. There is a marked likeness in the spirit of the 
hymns of the Vedas and the Psalms of David. Both give reality 
to the Divine influence in human life. There is a very beautiful 
passage in the Hebrew sacred poetry expressive of the relation of 
the Divine life to the cure of all mental and bodily maladies : " Bless 
the Lord, my soul, and forget not all His benefits : who forgiveth 
all thine iniquities ; who healetk all thy diseases ; who crowneth 
thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfieth thy 
mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed as the 
eagles." (Ps. ciii: 2-5.) No comment on this could add to its 
force or beauty. It expresses one of the profoundest practical 
truths in the universe, — the life of God in human nature. 



68 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

So fully convinced was the great religious poet of the Hebrews 
that the Lord was the source and the " strength of our life" (Ps. 
xxvii: 1) that he believed He could save us from the most fatal 
epidemics, — from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and 
from the destruction that wasteth at noonday. (Ps. xci: 3-6.) 
When the ocean tide flows back and takes possession of a river, it 
gives to the stream the qualities of the ocean. So when a man 
attains to the consciousness of the immanence of God in his indi- 
vidual being, and that his " life is hid with Christ in God " (Col. 
iii: 3), he is an incarnation of the Deity, a divine theophany, a 
manifestation of God in the flesh. He is a partaker of the divine 
nature (2 Peter i : 4), and thus is strengthened with might in the 
inner man. (Eph. iii: 15.) 

The idea of the indwelling of God in man as the source of life 
and health, which was so deeply rooted in the religious conscious- 
ness of the pious Jews, was carried over into Christianity, and 
received there a more philosophical expression. The whole life of 
Jesus the Christ was the highest exemplification of the power of 
this idea ever witnessed in the history of the race, and a demon- 
stration of its theoretical and practical truth. Ho cured diseases 
of mind and body by bringing men into conscious contact with 
the one and only Life. Thus we see that the higher forms of the 
religious life, and the state of mind and body which we designate 
by the name of health, are closely associated. The radical sig- 
nificance of the word religion is that of reunion, or a binding 
together of what has been sundered. When realized in its full 
import, it unites the body to the soul in a living correspondence, 
and consciously connects the soul with God in an influential sym- 
pathetic union. In this state of conjunction with the Lord of 
life, and the Father of spirits, the boundary line between our indi- 
vidual existence and the Divine Being becomes more dimly 
defined, and each soul becomes in a degree a repetition of the 
Christ in another personality, and the answer of the prayer of 
Jesus is fulfilled, that we might become one with God as he and 
the Father were one. (John xvii : 21-23.) In this state we lay 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 69 

hold of eternal life; death is annihilated, and disease loses its 
reality. Our life is so linked with the Divine Being that because 
He lives we live also. The Divine incarnation thus becomes, in 
a proper sense, a universal and continuous fact, for it is this alone 
that makes man a spiritual being, and kindles in the depths of 
his individual being the unquenchable spark of immortality. We 
are + hus made into the image of God, or are finite copies of the 
Divine Life. No one has life in himself, self-originated and 
underived, but it is the perpetual gift of God. It is also intui- 
tively certain that the same is true of health. Vital force in its 
last analysis is the life of God in man, and every man can say, in 
the language of David, that the Lord is the " health of his counte* 
nance." (Ps. xlii: 11; Fs. dill: 5.) 



CHAPTER A. 

THE BIRTH OP JESUS AS ILLUSTRATING THE GENERAL LAW 01 
CONCEPTION AND THE VITAL RELATION OP MAN TO GOD. 

The eloquent Balmes has well said : " The mysterious hand which 
governs the universe seems to hold in reserve for every great 
crisis of society an extraordinary man." This truth finds a com- 
plete illustration in the birth and life of Jesus the Christ. 

An infant in the arms of its mother, in a cradle or in a manger, 
is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, and no doubt a very 
Divine thing. I hope to make this appear in what I shall have 
to say in the brief compass of this chapter. An infant is the 
Divine flower that is to ripen into the mature fruit of manhood. 
But it is not suggestive of absolute but only of derived Divinity. 
With regard to the infant Jesus, if we free ourselves from the 
enchantment that distance lends to the view, and from the influ- 
ence of all dogmatic theories which are the creation of subsequent 
ages, and see him as he lay in the manger of the caravansary of 
Bethlehem, we might be moved at the sight, but it would be diffi- 
cult to conceive of him as a God. There is something Divine in 
all infancy, and no man ever looked into the face of a new-born 
babe without a certain feeling of respect and veneration amount- 
ing abnost to worship. Hence the Divinity most adored in the 
Roman Catholic Church is an infant. Maternity is the divinest 
function of human nature. The worship of Mary by millions of 
people is a blind instinctive recognition of this truth. It is only 

70 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 71 

secondary to the Divine operation that goes by the name of crea- 
tion, and a genuine motherhood stands next to the Godhead. 
And what shall I say of the product of this proximity ? Only, 
that there is a point in our lives where God and man, Divinity 
and humanity, most intimately meet and blend into one ; and that 
is infancy and childhood. There is an eternal meaning in the words 
of the prophet, " Unto us a child is born ; unto us a son is given ; 
and the government shall be upon his shoulders ; and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the 
Father of Ages, the Prince of Peace." (Isa. ix : 6.) In every 
child we behold a divinely human power, born of woman, but 
conceived by the Spirit of God, and a multiplication in an indi- 
vidual form, and under finite limitations, of the Divine Life. In 
adult age, in order to get into the closest proximity to God and 
union with Him, we must return to the divine innocence of child- 
hood. For unless we be converted and become as little children, 
we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Mat. xviii: 3.) 
As Wordsworth has expressively said, 

" Heaven lies around us in our infancy," 

or, as another has said, " The child who lays on its mother's breast 
is nearest to the portals of heaven." 

The sexual instinct is not an unholy and depraved action of the 
human mind, but is a finite image of the irrepressible conatus of 
the Divine mind to create, — a Divine impulse to add something to 
the sum total of happy existence. Creation is a necessity of the 
Infinite Love. God can no more help creating, or begetting, as 
the word means, than He can avoid living. His being must have 
ex-istence, or an outward manifestation. And the same loving 
Omnipotence to which we owe the commencement of our being 
will, if we consent, renew and restore our natures impaired and 
damaged by sin and disease. 

Whatever we may think or believe of the human nature of Jesus, 
one thing is certain, God was never born or begotten. We are 



72 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

born of God, and so was Jesus the Christ. The name the ahild 
of Mary received was familiar to Jewish ears, being the Greek 
form of the Hebrew Joshua, by which he was known among the 
Jews. It was a common name among that people, and by it they 
perpetuated the fame of their great warrior in the same way as 
we do honor to the memory of Washington by giving his name to 
our children. He was, undoubtedly, a remarkable child, — we can 
readily believe this, — and endowed with active spiritual instincts, 
but he grew in wisdom as well as in stature, and from infancy to 
manhood he seems to have undergone a perfectly human develop- 
ment. His intellectual and spiritual precocity exhibited at th> 
age of twelve shone all the brighter for the dark back-ground of 
Jewish stupidity on which the picture appears. But all the phe- 
nomena of his childhood, and of his manhood's brief career, will 
appear plain and natural if we can form a true idea of his concep- 
tion and the influences of the circumstances under which it took 
place. 

It matters little who the father of Jesus was, since in the 
Divine paternity we have the origin of all human life. With 
regard to Jesus there is but a slender basis of fact on which to 
erect a theory. The Church dogma of his conception involves the 
monstrous — I had almost said the blasphemous — absurdity of 
the infinite God begetting Himself in the womb of a virgin. Who 
the father of Jesus was is a question I have no disposition to dis- 
cuss, much less to enter into any controversy about it, since all 
human life finds its origin and paternity in God. In the highest 
sense, none of us have any father but God, the One Life of the 
universe. In the profound oration of Paul on Mars' Hill he 
quotes with approval the line from the poet Aratus, that we are all 
God's offspring (jhog y of His begetting). Our individual exist- 
ence is a sprout from a Divine underground root and always con- 
nected with it. From the meagre array of facts which anyone can 
give, it might be allowable to indulge in some "guesses at truth," 
since absolute knowledge with regard to it is out of our reach. 
The current orthodox doctrine is one it is difficult to accept, as it 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 73 

places the birth of Jesus so far out of the ordinary course of nat- 
ure as to be inconceivable, and, consequently, cannot be made an 
article of faith. Most thinking people within the pale of ortho- 
doxy feel that the less said about it the better ; while those out- 
side are disposed to look upon it as they do upon the Greek myth 
of the birth of a full-grown Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. 
There may be a substratum of truth in both, and in the case cf 
Jesus we shall try to find it. If we examine the more extended 
account of Luke, — for Mark and John are both silent respecting 
it, — all that can rationally be made out of it is that he was begot- 
ten under a high degree of spiritual influence and Divine afHatus, 
which gave character to his whole life. It is a well- established 
principle in the physiology of generation that the circumstances and 
influences under which conception takes place give a permanent 
shaping to the character of the new being. I choose to interpret 
Matthew by the more rational view of the physician Luke. (Luke i : 
85.) Perhaps we have in this passage the true theory of all con- 
ception. As all individual life is a derivation from God, the vivi- 
fying of the ovarian germ may always be ultimately referred to 
the operation of the Holy Spirit, or the emanating sphere of the 
Divine Life. If it be accomplished through an intervening me- 
dium and agency, it is still the same. If I move a rock from its 
place with my hands alone, or by the instrumentality of a lever 
turn it over, I am still the cause and origin of the movement. If 
this theory of conception is true, and the cohabitation of the sexes 
is only the occasion and not the cause of the impaitation of soul- 
life to a preexisting germ, it takes the generation and birth of 
Jesus out of the clsss of miraculous events, and brings them into 
the compass of the uniform laws of nature, or the undeviating 
mode of the Divine procedure. It seems to me that to impart the 
soul-principle to an ovarian germ, so as to constitute it a distinct 
and living individual, demands a Divine power as much as the 
creation of a world. If it be true, as Paul affirms, that in God we 
live and have our being, it must be equally predicable of the com* 
mencement of our existence. The beginning of spiritual life in 



74 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

the germ-cell must be from a Divine Promethean spark. Then 
we are all, in a proper sense, sons of God, and begotten of the 
Holy Spirit, and, having one Father, we are all brethren. In the 
birth of Jesus we have an illustration of the general law of con- 
ception and generation. There may be much of truth in the say- 
ing of Emerson that "the history of Jesus is the history of every 
man written large." His life shows what every one was made to 
be, and what undeveloped possibilities there are in human nature. 
This does not make him any less, for he remains still all that he 
ever claimed for himself, but it gives a Divine dignity to the whole 
of humanity. He claimed to be the son of God, and called God 
his Father, but he taught us to address the Divine Being as " our 
Father, who is in the heavens." The universal Fatherhood of 
God, and consequently the universal brotherhood of men, is an idea 
that he introduced into the world. In the Sermon on the Mount all 
those who are peace-makers as well as those who do good for evil 
are called "sons of God." (Mat. v: 9, 44, 45.) In the Gospel 
of Luke all who do good, especially to the unthankful and the 
evil, are called by the Christ the "sons of the Most High." 
(Lukevi: 35.) The belief that Jesus had only a one-sided 
earthly parentage, that of the Virgin Mary, rests on a slender 
foundation. It is based on the evidence of a dream, a kind of 
proof that would have no weight in a civil court, and would not 
weigh as much as a feather in the scale in settling any doubtful 
question in theology or philosophy in the present age. It has the 
disadvantage of not being our own dream, but that of another man 
more than eighteen centuries ago. And it only affirms that the 
conception of Mary was from the Holy Spirit, which may, as we 
have seen, be perhaps predicable of the origin of all men. (Mat. 
i: 20.) Mary asserts that Joseph was the father of Jesus (Luke 
ii: 48): "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." 

In the genealogy of Jesus, in the beginning of the Gospel of 
Matthew, he is traced back through Joseph to Abraham. Why is 
this? What has that to do with it if Joseph was not his father 
in the ordinary acceptation of that term ? In the third chapter of 



THE DIVINE LAW OJf CUKE. 75 

the Gospel of Luke the line of succession runs back through 
Joseph to Adam, who is called the son of God; and it is said that 
Joseph was his supposed father. This is a feeble translation of 
the original term, which rather signifies that such was the current 
and unquestioned belief. It was taken for granted, and never 
doubted, that such was the fact. If this was a mistake, Jesus 
never corrected it. In the common speech of the day he was 
called the son of Joseph. " Is not this the carpenter's son ? Is 
not his mother called Mary ? " (Mat. xiii : 55.) " And they said : 
Is not this Joseph's son ? " (Luke iv : 22.) " And they said : 
Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we 
know?" (Johnvi: 42.) "Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith 
unto him : We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the 
prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." (John 
i: 45.) The simple fact, unadorned by any theological fables, 
seems to be this : A young woman named Mary had been espoused 
at the age of sixteen, as the Church legends say, to a man much 
older than herself, by the name of Joseph, whose business it was, 
as Justin Martyr records, to make yokes and plows. In those 
days, as every Jewish scholar knows, espousal was in fact a mar- 
riage. It gave to the man all the rights of a husband. The law 
recognized it as a legal wedlock, and separation could be effected 
only by a writing of divorcement. Though no fruit of this virtual 
marriage was looked for, yet she " was found " in the incipient stage 
of a not unclesired maternity, and Jesus was their first child. 
{The Birth of Jesus, by Henry A. Miles, D.D., p. 45.) 

This is as likely to be true as any theory that we can construct, 
and is perfectly consistent with the idea he so often expresses that 
God was his father. He was at the same time the son of man and 
the son of God. 

I have no disposition to pursue the discussion of the subject fur- 
ther, and the sacredness of the subject restrains me from employ- 
ing the reductio ad absurdum, which would be a most effective, 
logical weapon to be used against the current theological belief. 
To one who loves Jesus it is more important to know that he still 



76 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURB. 

is and what he is than to understand how he came into existence. 
He represents the highest type of manhood, and, consequently, the 
highest manifestation of the Godhead. The Grecian gods, as 
Jupiter and Apollo, were all men; but Jesus the Christ is far 
more human than any of them, and, consequently, more Divine. 
A vital, sympathetic union with him cannot but elevate us to a 
more exalted plane of spiritual existence, whoever was his father, 
or even if he had no known earthly parentage. The nearer we 
get to him by a moral likeness, and the more we assimilate the 
Divine life that was, and still is, in him, and which is even now 
communicable to us through his personality, the closer is our prox- 
imity to the Deity. Happy is the man who realizes the conscious 
fulfillment of Ins promise : " Lo, I am with you always," and, " If I 
go away, I will come to you." His presence is to be sought and 
found not in the eucharistic elements but in our own spiritual 
nature. As he was never mentally or physically diseased, a sym- 
pathetic conjunction with him must bring to us a healthful and 
renewing influence. Nothing but a sauative influx, a spiritually 
therapeutic emanation can go forth from him. Let us remember 
that a sincere invocation of aid from him unites the severed link 
between our being and his, and puts his life in God in vital com- 
munication with ours. Jesus the Christ is the highest incarnation 
of the Logos, or the Word, as an inward light, and, consequently, 
union with him places us in a receptive relation to the Divine Life 
and Light. Bonaventura speaks of the Word as incarnated in the 
personality of Jesus as an interior light to mankind: "He is the 
interior teacher, and one can know no truth except by this Word, 
which speaks, not vocally as we do, but by an interior illumination. 
He is himself in our souls, and diffuses the light of true, and living 
ideas over all the abstract and dark ideas of our intellect." {Lumen 
Ecclesice, Vol. I., p. 42.) In the preface to the Gospel of John, the 
Logos, or Word, is said to be the light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world, and as many as receive it, to them it 
gives the power — or, as it is rendered in the margin, the right, 
the privilege, — of becoming the sons o£ God." (John, i : 9, 12.) 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 77 

In closing the discussion of this subject, the question arises, 
when viewed from this stand-point, — that of a real, hut exalted, 
humanity, — can Jesus be to the diseased and sinful what we all 
need, a Saviour? I unhesitatingly answer, yes, far more so than 
when we view him from the position in which the creeds of the 
Church generally place him. Untold myriads of souls have found 
in him all that his name implies. He is a Divine manifestation in 
the flesh, a human being intensely conscious of the identity of his 
life with God's Life, and through him and in him we may have 
access to the illuminating and vivifying Word. What more can 
any human soul need ? The pure and lofty mind of Jesus, his 
deep and living spirituality, his irrepressible love for humanity, 
of which he was a part, his desire to make known God, and to im- 
part to all the Divine Life and Light that were in him, is what 
lifted up those who intimately knew him to a higher stage of 
existence, and the same inspiring and elevating influence can be 
received by all who come into a vital sympathy with him in his 
true humanity today. He may become to us the highest men- 
tal and spiritual guide to health and happiness. The man Christ 
Jesus, in his glorified humanity, is a mediator. (1 Tim. ii: 5.) 
He bridges the chasm which our ignorance and sensualism have 
opened between the human soul and God, and in him and through 
him the finite spirit may meet and mingle with the Infinite Life. 
A genuine faith — a faith that is a divine conviction of God and 
the things of God — is one of the greatest moral forces in the uni- 
verse. It summons into activity all there is of life and power in 
man, and develops all that is good in germ in human nature. 
Faith in Jesus, not as a theological myth, a mere theoretical and 
unsubstantial, divine apparition, tut as a personal, human, living, 
and ascended but still present Chris*., places the soul through the 
overflowing fullness of his spiritual b^ing in communication with 
the unfathomed depths of the One Life. According to Paul, Jesus 
is exalted above all principalities and powv's, and every name that 
is named, not only in tins age, but in tha,' V?hich is to come. 
(Eph. i: 20, 21.) This was the untroubled, all-satisfying faith 



78 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

of the apostles and primitive believers. Of the incomprehensible 
metaphysical puzzle and contradictory jargon of the Athanasian 
Creed they were blissfully ignorant. To them the Christ stood at 
the summit of all created existences, below the Absolute and the 
Infinite, but above all that is finite, as the upper link in the chain 
of being, where it fastens to the Uncreated Mind, and conjoins all 
below to Him. Yet he was, and is, a man, — "the man Christ 
Jesus." As such he still lays down his life for men, that is, con- 
secrates his blissful existence to the good of all. And we are 
saved (or healed) through him not so much by his death as by 
the sphere of his life. (Rom. v: 10.) When on earth, in his 
fleshly manifestation, those who came to him he directed to the One 
Life. He is today more accessible to the souls of men than when 
his presence was limited and restrained by a material body. If 
as a human personality he was ever a Saviour to the bodies and 
spirits of men, he can be more to us now. The self-styled and 
pseudo-evangelical view of Jesus takes him so far out of the sphere 
of human sympathy and removes him so far from us that he becomes 
inaccessible and unapproachable by the souls of men. There is 
an almost impassible gulf between us and him. If it had been the 
studied design of the Church to exclude men from the saving 
influence of Jesus, I know of no way in which this could have bet- 
ter been accomplished in harmony with the laws of mind than by 
the method adopted. They took away the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven, and neither entered in themselves nor suffered those who 
would to enter in. The dark and bloody history of the Church 
has been the result of this. For many ages they took away from 
the faith of men the humanity of the loving Jesus, and the result 
was an inhuman religion, a relentless and persecuting bigotry. In 
cur language the word humanity is used for kindness, benevo- 
lence, and, especially, a disposition to relieve persons in distress 
and suffering. It is a fact to be accounted for by some spiritual 
law that in proportion to the extent in which the idea of the true 
humanity of Jesus has been banished from Christianity it became 
an inhuman bigotry. So far as the humanity of Jesus retired into 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 79 

the background in the creed, a cruel, implacable, and merciless 
spirit came to the front in the life of the Church. It is thus 
today, and always will be. But the true idea of Jesus is gradu- 
ally but surely being rescued from the theological falsities beneath 
which it has been buried, but not suffocated, and men will find him 
again as a true, but exalted, humanity, and in all the inner virtue 
of his name Jesus, that is, Saviour or Healer. 

We must accustom ourselves to make a distinction between 
Jesus, the name of his person, and the Christ, which is a designa- 
tion of a state and character which he attained at an age long sub- 
sequent to his birth, Jesus was not born the Christ any more 
than Abraham Lincoln was born president of the United States. 
Owing to the spiritual influences and conditions under which he 
was conceived, the soul of the child Jesus was, by an ante-natal 
predisposition, open to the reception of the living Word, or illum- 
inating Spirit. And he seems to have been educated from within, 
and not from without. His mind, as a tabula rasa, or clean slate, 
was not preoccupied by the study of Jewish literature, and he 
affirms that his doctrine was not his own, or self-originated, but 
received by influx from the Father. (John vii: 15, 16.) His 
spiritual nature, by the vivifying influence into it of the life and 
light of the Word, was/w% developed instead of remaining, as in 
most men, in a dormant, chrysalis state. Thus, he gradually 
became the Christ, the anointed, or knowing one, just as Gautania, 
who was born of the Virgin Maia, is said to have become a Bud- 
dha, or, as the Sanscrit word means, " one who knows." Some- 
thing analogous to this has often been exhibited in the history of 
the world, and especially in the development of Emanuel Sweden- 
borg into seership. He became " one who knows" far more than 
Gautama. In the case of J esus there was witnessed a perfectly 
normal evolution, or unfolding, of the deific soul-germ, or, as 
Swedenborg calls it, the Divine internal that is in all human 
souls. (Arcana Celestia, 1999.) I look upon Jesus the Christ 
as the highest illustration in the history of mankind of a fully and 
harmoniously developed humanity. In such a being there musi; 



80 THE DIVINE LAW OE CURE. 

of necessity "be such a blending of the Divine and the purely 
human that it is difficult to tell where the boundary is that sepa- 
rates the one from the other. The individual man becomes so 
mixed with God that it is next to impossible to disentangle them. 
But this is no miracle, but only a higher order of nature. 

I believe as much in the Divinity of the Christ as the most 
so-called evangelical and zealous orthodoxy ever did, but only in 
a different way. The way in which the child Jesus was developed 
into the Christ is the law of the highest education, or unfold- 
ment, of the innermost nature of man. There is an infinite mean- 
ing in the saying of Jesu3 to his diseiples, as the pioneer of a 
higher and diviner development of man : " I go to prepare a place 
[or attainable state and spiritual position for you]. And if I go 
and prepare a place for you, I will come again [in the influx of 
the sphere of my life] and receive you unto myself [or elevate you 
to the spiritual position T occupy]; that where I am, there ye may 
be also." (John xiv: 2, 3.) In this he teaches that his state 
is not unattainable by others, and that he is willing to share it 
with others. This makes the exalted man Christ Jesus more of a 
Saviour, Restorer, and Redeemer than the Church creeds have ever 
done. In this we see an illustration of the principle laid down by 
the Christ, and engraved, as it were, over the entrance gate of a 
genuine Christianity, and which the sounding-line of the Church 
has been too short to fathom, that the true disciple is to be a copy 
of the master or teacher. (Mat. xvi : 24.) The disciple, the 
scholar, follows the master to suffering, to active usefulness, and 
to the glorification of his humanity, and by a spiritual likeness 
becomes a repetition of him, and an echo of him. If any soul of 
man needs more a Saviour in Jesus than this view of him gives, he 
will search far and long through all the creeds of Christendom 
before he can find him. If this is a heresy, may it rapidly 
spread over the entire globe until, by beholding Jesus as he is, 
all may be changed into the same image from glory to glory by 
the Lord as a Spirit (which is the marginal and literal rendering). 
(2 Cor. iii: 13.) Through a sympathetic union with him, an 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 81 

affectionate melting of our souls into his, a fusion of our life with 
his life, and a blending of our mode of thought and feeling with 
his, may the world advance to the realization of a higher incarna- 
tion of God in the whole of humanity. This will be the fulfill- 
ment of the words of the Christ: "If I be lifted up [or exalted] 
from the earth, I will draw all men unto me." (John xii : 32.) 



CHAPTER XL 

THE DIVINE LIGHT WITHIN AS AN UNERRING GUIDE IN HUMAN 
LIFE. 

One of the mistakes of the religious world has been that men 
have sought without for that which they can only find within. The 
drowning man can be saved by a plank or a rope that a friendly 
hand throws to him, and he will even grasp at a straw; but there 
are circumstances of mental suffering and anxiety when the meta- 
phorical plank and rope will not save us. How much better for a 
man to learn that somewhere in the compass of his own being, and 
the enclosure of his own nature, is to be found the principle of 
buoyancy that will keep him afloat, and then the rope and the plank 
will be serviceable but not indispensable. Tradition, the dogmas 
of the Church, the authority of an external book, and the outward, 
machinery of worship, are the plaak, the rope, and the straw 
thrown to a man in a flood of doubt and spiritual distress. But 
all these have become water-logged, and can barely keep themselves 
afloat in the public mind, and are fast sinking out of sight. And 
must we sink 1 By no means. The principle of Christianity, and 
of every true religion, is within the soul, — the recognition of the 
incarnation of God in every human being. Let us grasp this truth 
in all its fullness of meaning, and strike out and gain the shore. 
God is to us the fountain of life, and in his light we see light 
(Ps. xxxvi : 9.) 

82 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 83 

As a guide to duty, and in the discovery of spiritual truth, some 
higher faculty and diviner light than mere reason is needed. This 
has been felt and acknowleged in all ages of the world. In the 
Alexandrian schools of philosophy, which reproduced with modifi- 
cations the speculations of Plato, and in the modern idealistic 
systems of Germany, and even in the metaphysics of Sir William 
Hamilton, and in the mystic writers of all ages, the incapacity of 
reason alone to solve the problems of philosophy and morality is 
fully confessed. The infallible and unerring guide of men's souls 
is not, and cannot be, an external book, but an interior light which 
quickens our spiritual intelligence, so that it becomes the light 
of life. The state of illumination in which spiritual truths are 
clearly seen has received different names. Plotinus denominated 
this higher faculty ecstasy, — a state in which the mind becomes 
freed from the trammels of sense and of the body. St. Bernard 
calls it contemplation ; George Fox, the inward voice. Schelling 
called it the intellectual intuition, and Kant, the pure reason; 
Jacobi called it faith arising from feeling. Pythagoras desig- 
nated it as the great light and salt of ages. Plutarch called it 
the interior guide and everlasting fountain of virtue. With 
Socrates it was the good demon or spirit. This was not, as has 
been generally supposed, an individual spirit or guardian angel. 
The word he uses will not bear that construction. It i3 not dalpwv 
{demon) but dai[i6viov (daimonioii) , which properly signifies a 
Divine or spiritual influence. In the system of Confucius, the 
Chinese philosopher, it is spoken of as " that principle by which 
simple and ignorant men and women, of the most ordinary capacity, 
may know all that appertains to their ordinary actions and conduct 
every day of their lives." In its highest form of experience, 
Swedenborg calls it perception and a state of illustration, or inte- 
rior illumination. In the New Testament this inward, Divine 
light is called the Comforter or Paraclete, the inward teacher, the 
Spirit of truth, which is to guide us into all truth. (John xiv : 
26 : xv : 26 ; xvi : 7, 13.) In the Old Testament it is called the 
Word of the Lord that came to the prophets and to Moses, and 



84 « THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

which in the first chapter of John is called " the true light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." It is the source 
of every genuine inspiration. Under its influence the mind is raised 
in its action far above the decision of the senses, and even of the 
logical consciousness or the reasoning faculty. In this interior 
illumination all truth becomes self-evident. It is seen in its own 
light and loved for its own divine self. As a guide in life, it is far 
above the letter of the Word, and is that without which the external 
book would be of little use. It is of higher authority than any system 
of rules drawn from the Bible. For, as Paley long ago said, " Who- 
ever expects to find in the Scriptures a specific direction for every 
moral doubt that may arise, looks for more than he will there find." 
We need every day, and every hour, the same inspiration by which 
they were written. In our interpretation of the Book, we need 
some divine illuminating power to break the seals and open the 
volume. (Eev. v:5.) The answer of the eunuch to Philip, 
when he was asked, " Understandest thou what thou readest ? " 
will always have its application to us, — " How can I, except some 
one guide me? " (Acts viii: 30, 31.) This interior light, this 
Paraclete, or Divine instructor, is always available. For, as I. H. 
Fichte has truly remarked, " Inspiration is a far more universal 
idea than its theological acceptation has admitted, while the ordin- 
ary systems of psychology have wholly ignored it." 

That there is such a thing as an immediate revelation of truth 
from God to the human soul has been admitted and taught by 
nearly all theological writers, and those of the most diverse opin- 
ions on other doctrines. Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon on Mat. 
xvi: 17, proves "that there is such a thing as a spiritual and 
Divine light immediately imparted to the souls of men by God." 
( Works, Vol. IV., Sermon XXVII.) This is a doctrine that haa 
always been maintained by the Society of Friends, and is the 
characteristic tenet of their system of religion. John Wesley 
taught the same thing in his two sermons on the Witness of the 
Spirit, in which he affirms that God directly impresses the spirit of 
the believer with the fact of his pardon, and with the assurance of 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 85 

the Divine favor. This is the distinctive doctrine of Methodism, 
according to Dr. Abel Stevens. But why confine Divine revela- 
tion to this one point ? Can God speak to us only on one subject, 
that of our pardon and the forgiveness of om- sins ? Paul takes a 
broader view, and declares that we can have no knowledge of 
spiritual things except it be imparted to us by the Spirit of God, 
which reveals them to us. (1 Cor. i: 9-12.) Theodore Parker 
extends the idea of inspiration further than Edwards or Wesley. 
He makes inspiration to consist in the direct and intuitive percep- 
tion of some truth either of thought or sentiment, and that this is 
the action of the Highest within the soul, the Divine presence im- 
parting light. In this view Newton was as really inspired as 
Moses, for it was a more difficult thing to write the Principia than 
the Decalogue. (Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion, 
p. 205.) 

As God speaks and acts in the material world by what we call 
the laws of nature, so His immanence in man gives to the legiti- 
mate and unperverted action of all the powers of the mind the dig- 
nity of a divine law, an interior and unwritten Decalogue. This 
is according to the prophetic announcement that the time would 
come when the Lord -would put, or rather, as it is more literally 
translated, give, His laws in our minds and write them upon our 
hearts, or, as it is expressed by Jeremiah, the Lord would put 
his law in our inward parts. ( Jer. xxxi : 31-34 ; Heb. viii : 
9-11.) In accordance with the prevailing tendency to limit the 
action of God in man, there is only one faculty that has been 
accepted as His organ of communication with man. It has been 
so often asserted that conscience is the voice of God in man that 
it has become a religious axiom. This is undoubtedly true ; but 
is God eveiy where else silent in the human soul ? Does He not 
speak and act through all our faculties ? On the subject of con- 
science Reid, the Scotch metaphysician, says in the conclusion of 
his chapter on the sense of duty : " The sum of what has been said 
in this chapter is that by an original power of the mind which we 
call conscience, or the moral faculty, we have the conceptions of 



86 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

right and wrong in human conduct, of merit and demerit, of duty 
and moral obligation, and our other moral conceptions ; and that 
by the same faculty we perceive some things in human conduct to 
be right and others to be wrong; that the first principles of morals 
are the dictates of this faculty, and that we have the same reason 
to rely upon those dictates as upon the determination of our senses, 
or of our other natural faculties." 

On the subject of a Divine light within I have only space in 
this chapter to quote the language of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cam- 
bray, as one of the best representatives of the mystic theology. 
He says out of the depths of his own experience: "It is easy to 
perceive that our feeble reason is continually set to rights by 
another superior reason, which we consult within ourselves, and 
which corrects us. This reason we cannot change, because it is 
immutable ; but it changes us because we have need of it. All 
consult this everywhere. It answers in China as in France and 
America. It does not divide itself in communicating itself. The 
light it gives me takes nothing from those who were before filled 
with it. It communicates itself at all times immeasurably, and is 
never exhausted. It is the sun that enlightens mind as the out- 
ward sun does bodies. This light is eternal and immense. It 
comprehends all time as well as all space. It is not myself; it 
reproves and corrects me against my will. It is then above me, 
and above all weak and imperfect men as I am. This supreme 
reason which is the rule of mine, this wisdom from which every 
wise man receives his, this supreme spring of light, is the God we 
seek." 

The guiding principle of our lives is to be found not in a book, 
or in a whole library of works on theology, but is the voice of God 
in the depths of our own being. It is not a self-derived intelli- 
gence, but a constant revelation of a present and living God. He 
is our light and our salvation. (Ps. xxvii: 1.) In harmony with 
this view, Jesus the Christ says to all human souls: "Why judge 
ye not of your own selves what is right?" (Lukexii: 57.) 
This is a truth of not mere speculative interest, but of great prac- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 87 

tical value. It has its application to all the duties of life from the 
least to the greatest, and to the means of recovery to mental and 
bodily health and happiness. This inward oracle will not only 
teach us in regard to our moral and religious duties, but will give 
us the most unerring prescription for our mental and physical 
maladies. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ON DIVINE REVELATION AS A PAST EXPERIENCE OF MEN, AND 
AS A PRESENT NEED OF THE HUMAN MIND. 

We have shown in what has been said in previous chapters that 
our relation to God is a vital one, in other words, that our life is 
a perpetual derivation from the Divine Being. But is it not 
equally true of our knowledge ? Could we any more think with- 
out God than we could live without Him ? A revelation of knowl- 
edge from Him is no more unreasonable in itself than a communi- 
cation of life from Him, since mental action is the highest form of 
vital activity. All genuine knowledge, in philosophy, in science, 
and in religion, is, in a proper sense, a revelation from the Divine 
Mind. Here is its sempiternal source. The essential element in the 
idea of a revelation from God is that some truth is made known 
to us from Him. The word revelation (from re and veh, an 
unveiling and uncovering) has been denned the act of disclosing 
or discovering to others what was before unknown to them ; and 
in its religious application it is the disclosure or communication of 
truth to men by God Himself. But is there any truth that does 
not come from Him ? As the radii of a circle lead us back to the 
centre, so every ray of knowledge has an unbroken connection with 
the central Sun, the Divine Wisdom, and the revelation of it is 
only our coming to the perception, or conscious reception, of it. 

Theologians speak of the Scriptures as containing a. system of 
divine truth. All other knowledge is viewed by them as com- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 89 

paratively profane, and lacking the quality of sacredness. This is 
too narrow a view, and places an obstacle in the way of our spiritual 
growth. We ask the intuitive reason of every man, is such a dis- 
tinction justifiable ? Is there any truth that is not divine ? Is 
not all truth sacred ? The mischief of such a distinction lies in its 
immoral tendency, in causing in the public mind a too low estimate 
of the value of truth, and of an undeviating truthfulness in our 
every-daj^ life. All truth should be viewed as a divinely sacred 
intellectual treasure, and all falsity as infernal. The one is the 
light of the angelic heavens ; the other is the darkness and foul 
emanation of the abyss. 

On this subject Morell, in his excellent work on the Philosophy 
of Religion, judiciously remarks : " The idea of a revelation 
always implies a process by which knowledge, in some form or 
other, is communicated to an intelligent belngr ; For a revelation 
at all to exist there must be an intelligent being on the one hand 
to receive it, and there must be on the other hand a process by 
which this same intelligent being becomes cognizant of certain 
facts or ideas. Suppress either of these conditions and no revela- 
tion can exist. The preaching of an angel would be no revela- 
tion to an idiot; and a Bible in Chinese would offer none to a 
European. In the former case there is no intelligence capable of 
receiving the ideas conveyed ; in the latter case the process of con- 
veyance renders the whole thing practically a nonentity, by allow- 
ing no idea whatever to reach the mind. We may say, then, in 
few words, that a revelation always indicates a mode of intelligence. 
This point should be carefully noted, and we must not confound 
the idea of a revelation as a means of communicating truth from 
one mind to another with the object revealed." 

" If a revelation, then, necessarily signifies a mode of intelligence, 
we have next to determine what mode of intelligence or what form 
of knowing which the term revelation implies. There are only 
two modes of intelligence possible to man. They are the only 
two methods of acquiring truth adapted to the present state of the 
powers of the human mind. To conceive a third mode is a psy- 



90 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

ecological impossibility. These are the intuitional and the logical. 
In the former we arrive at truth by a direct perception of it. 
Truth is seen in its own light. It is thus self-evident or proves 
itself. In the logical mode of intelligence we arrive at truth 
mediately, or as a necessary inference from other known and 
acknowledged verities. These two methods of knowing are the 
only conceivable ones. Sensation, which might be considered a 
third, is found to be not knowledge, but only feeling. Of itself it 
can give no knowledge. The senses of an idiot may be as perfect 
as our own, and those of some animals are far more acute, yet 
their knowledge is not in proportion." (Philosophy of Religion , 
p. 123-125.) 

If a revelation from God must take place in harmony with the 
laws of the human mind, and must be a direct showing of truth to 
our intuitional faculty, the question arises, can it take place now 
as well as at any former period of the world's history ? Is man 
as capable of it today as some men were many centuries ago? 
These are questions of great interest to every human soul. Was 
it once possible, but has now become impossible ? Does it not 
rather arise as a practicable spiritual experience out of the neces- 
sary relations that man sustains to God, — that the finite mind 
holds, and must forever hold, to the Infinite Mind ? Is it not 
needed as much today as it ever was ? And, if so, will it not be 
given if it is possible ? The soul cannot be satisfied with the dry, 
mouldy, Gibeonitish crusts of the past experiences of others, even 
though they were pious and semi-enlightened Jews, but requires 
for its nutriment and spiritual growth the living bread that comes 
down from heaven, and which, like the manna, is gathered fresh 
every day. 

The authors of all the separate tracts, poems, epistles, etc., 
which collectively constitute the book we call the Bible, are, at 
least, thirty in number. How many more there were we have no 
means of knowing, as the names of the writers of many parts of 
the volume are not given. These are supposed to have received 
a revelation from God. We admit it to be a fact; but what does 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 91 

the fact prove ? Is it any evidence that no one else could ? Do 
the writings of these men exhaust the supply of truth that could be 
made known from God, or do they fully satisfy the spiritual needs 
of all men everywhere ? It is certain they do not. If thirty men 
received a revelation of truth from God, in harmony with the laws 
of mind, it would only prove that thirty, or even thirty thousand, 
more might enjoy the same experience. God is not far from every 
one of us, and He will respond to our sincere yearning for truth 
by sharing the infinite stores of the Divine Intelligence with the 
thirsty soul. 

We would not undervalue that degree of truth which God made 
known in a way in perfect accordance with the laws of the human 
intelligence to thirty Jews in different ages of the world, and in 
sparsely scattered fragments along the stream of history. Place 
as high a value upon it as you please, or can possibly find in it; I 
admit it all. I would only enlarge the volume of Divine revela- 
tions so as to include all truth, as has been done by Jesus the 
Christ when he says : " Thy word is truth." All truth that ever 
came to man is a ray of the eternal Logos, the uncreated Word, 
the Divine Reason and Wisdom, made available to finite minds. 
It is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. The totality of truth is the Word of God in its fullness. 
But if it should be written the world itself would not contain the 
books. (John xxi: 25.) The real Word of the Lord is the God- 
Light within the soul, and not a book. It was the theory of 
Malebranche that in our vision of the objects of nature we do 
not perceive the objects themselves but the ideas of them which 
are in God. God is so united to our souls by His presence that 
He may be said to have that relation of place to the mind which 
space has to body. Wherever the human mind is there God is, 
and, consequently, all the ideas which are in God. (Brown's 
Philosophy of the Mind, Vol. H., p. 144.) 

This theory of Malebranche seems to be only a modification of 
the doctrine of Augustine, which is the fundamental principle of 
his metaphysical philosophy, — that there is a supreme, eternal, 



m 



92 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

and universal Truth which is ultimately present to every mind, 
and in which all minds alike perceive the truths, which all alike 
are, as it were, necessitated to believe, for example, the truths of 
arithmetic and geometry and the primary, essential truths of relig- 
ion and morality. 

" These truths we feel to be eternal, because we feel that they are 
not contingent on the existence of those who perceive them, but 
were, and are, and must forever be, the same ; and we feel also that 
the truth is one, whatever be the number of individuals that per- 
ceive it, and is not converted into many truths merely by the mul- 
titude of believers." 

" If, in discoursing of any truth, I perceive that to be true which 
you say, and you perceive that to be true which I say, where, I 
pray you, do we both see this at the same moment ? I certainly 
see it not in you, nor you in me, but both see it in that unchange- 
able Truth which is beyond and above our individual minds." 
{Brown's Philosophy of the Mind, Vol. II., p. 144.) 

This unchanging and everywhere-present light of truth is what 
is called in the Scriptures the Word of the Lord, the Divine 
Logos, and by Jesus the Christ, " the spirit of Truth," which was 
promised to guide into all truth. The human mind in all ages 
and climes has been in communication with the sphere of the 
Divine Intelligence. The light of the heavens has leaked down 
through the crystal dome and been caught by thirsty souls. The 
Jews and other ancient nations gathered and preserved some drops 
of the water of life (as Jesus symbolically calls the truth he 
preached) that fell from the eaves of the palace of G-od. But 
there is much more to be obtained and treasured up by coming 
ages. Those eminent Christian teachers, Origen and Augustine, 
looked upon Christianity as only a fuller development of truths 
that had before been made known in a degree to mankind, and the 
Gospel was viewed by them as directly connected with Divine 
revelations at all times and in all places. On this point Bunsen 
remarks : " The fact of a universal revelation, of a continuity of 
Divine influences, everywhere and at all times, remains as the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 93 

anchor of the soul, as the Rock of Ages, on which Christ's Church 
will be built." (The Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes, and 
Christians. Introduction.) 

Some of the best of the philosophical Greeks recognized the 
influential relation of the Infinite Mind and Life to the souls of 
men, — as high a view as that entertained by the Church, and 
even less narrow. Seneca distinctly declares: "Without God 
there is no great man. It is He who inspires us with great ideas 
and exalted designs. When you see a man superior to his pas- 
sions, happy in adversity, calm amid surrounding storms, can you 
forbear to confess that those qualities are too exalted to have their 
origin in the little individual whom they ornament ? A god inhab- 
its every virtuous man, and without God there is no virtue." 
(Epistles, 41, 73.) Plato entertained a similar view. In Menon 
he makes Socrates teach that actual virtue comes untaught. It 
does not come by nature, but by the special inspiration of the 
gods ." ( Grote's Plato and other Companions of Socrates, Vol. 

iL. P . no 



CHAPTER Xin. 

THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 

Inspiration may be defined as the reception of a spiritual and 
Divine influence that augments the activity of our natural powers 
of mind, and exalts our mental faculties to a higher plane of 
thought and feeling. It is as if a new spirit was breathed into the 
subject of it, as the word itself (from in and spiro, to breathe) sig- 
nifies. The word inspirit, which signifies to infuse new life and 
energy into another, expresses the exact idea of inspiration. It is 
to animate, to invigorate, to breathe into one a quickened action 
of the soul. It adds no new faculty to human nature, but stimu- 
lates to a higher range of action those we already possess. 

Morell, in his profound work on the Philosophy of Religion, 
takes a very rational view of the nature of inspiration, and one 
that does not exclude it from the possibility of a present experi- 
ence. He says : " Revelation and inspiration indicate one united 
process, the result of which upon the human mind is to produce a 
state of spiritual intuition, whose phenomena are so extraordinary 
that we at once separate the agency by which they are produced 
from any of the ordinary principles of human development. And 
yet this agency is applied in perfect consistency with the laws and 
natural operations of our spiritual nature. Inspiration does not im- 
ply anything generically new in the actual processes of the human 
mind ; it does not involve any form of intelligence essentially dif- 
ferent from what we already possess ; it indicates rather the eleva- 

94 






THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 95 

tion of the religious consciousness, and with it, of course, the power 
of spiritual vision, to a degree of intensity peculiar to the indi- 
viduals thus highly favored of God. We must regard the whole 
process of inspiration, accordingly, not as mechanical, but purely 
dynamical: involving not a novel and supernatural faculty, but a 
faculty already enjoyed, elevated supernaturally to an extraordi- 
nary power, and susceptibility ; indicating, in fact, an inward nat- 
ure so perfectly harmonized to the Divine, so freed from the dis- 
torting influences of prejudice, passion, and sin, so simply recipi- 
ent of the Divine ideas circumambient around it, so responsive in 
all its strings to the breath of heaven, that truth leaves an impress 
upon it which answers perfectly to its objective reality." (Phi- 
losophy of Religion, pp. 150, 151.) 

The doctrine was quite common among the theologians of past 
centuries that the inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures was 
verbal, and not merely a stimulus afforded to the intuitive faculty, 
— a theory entirely inconsistent with the difference of style among 
the writers of the Bible. This theory is maintained by Gaussen in 
his work entitled Theopneusty. Gerhard and the Buxtorfs even 
went so far as to affirm the Divine inspiration of the Hebrew vowel 
points. But all these theories would make the writings we call the 
Bible, or the Book, a matter of dictation rather than of inspiration. 
The prevalence of these extreme mechanical views has in recent 
times been pretty generally abandoned, and a more intelligent theory 
of inspiration, one that brings it more into harmony with the law3 
of mind, is taking its place. The following passage quoted from 
Akerman, in Hare's Mission of the Comforter, expresses the more 
advanced and rational view of the present day : " Theologians 
have not unfrequently been guilty of a gross error with regard ta 
the Biblical idea of inspiration from looking upon it as mechanical 
instead of dynamical. From the passages cited (Gen. xii : 38 j 
Job xxxii : 8 ; Isa. xi : 2 ; Mat. x : 20 ; Luke ii : 40 : John xiv : 
17, 26 ; John xvi : 13 ; Rom. viii : 16 ; 1 Cor. ii : 10 ; xii : 3 ; Gal. 
iv: 6; 2 Pet. i: 21) it is sufficiently evident that the Bible speaks 
of the working of the Spirit of God as dynamical. Hence theologi 



96 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

ans ought never to have encouraged the crude notion that persons 
under inspiration were like so many drawers, wherein the Holy 
Ghost put such and such things, which they then took out as some- 
thing ready made, and laid before the world. So that their recipi- 
ency in reference to the Spirit inspiring them was like that of a 
letter box. Whereas inspiration, according to the Bible, is to be 
regarded as a vivifying and animating operation on the spiritual 
faculty in man, by which its energy and capacity are extraordin- 
arily heightened, so that his powers of internal perception discerned 
things spread out before them clearly and distinctly, which at other 
times lay beyond his range of vision, and were dark and hidden." 
{Hare's Mission of the Comforter, p. 328. Note.) 

Inspiration is a quickening, an awakening into conscious activity, 
of our spiritual perceptions or intuitions. The truths, thus dis- 
cerned, can come to an external expression, so as to be conveyed 
to other minds, only through the words that are laid up in our 
memory. In a state of inspiration, the Divine element in man, 
which is usually latent or dormant, asserts its supremacy, and 
raises the intellect above the range of the senses and their fallacies 
into the clear light of truth. The mind is laid open to the recep- 
tion of the living light of heaven, and comes into sympathetic con- 
junction with the general sphere of life and intelligence in the 
world above. The soul comes into vivifying contact with the 
Logos, the spiritual and living Word, which comes to the illumin- 
ated mind as it has to the prophets of all ages. All Scripture, that 
is, every sacred expression of truth above the ordinary level, is 
given by inspiration of God, — it is, as Paul affirms, a Theopneusty, 
a breathing into the receptive intellect of man the breath of life 
from God. It is a stirring of the Divinity within him, for holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Pet. 
i : 21.) This may be affirmed not only of the Psalms of David, 
but of the hymns of the Vedas, and of all the higher forms of relig- 
ious poetry and literature. Inspiration is promised as a perma- 
nent experience, and a perpetual privilege of the disciples of 
Christ. The Comforter, the Divine Paraclete, which was to guide 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 97 

into all truth, was to abide with us forever. (John xiv: 16.) 
Inspiration, so far as it is an intellectual illumination, is proffered 
to all who seek it, in this passage of the Epistle of James : " If 
any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men 
liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." (James 
i : 15.) No one can fail to notice the universality of the promise. 
So far as we need an infallible guide to present duty, we have the 
promise that when we turn to the right or the left we shall hear a 
word saying : " This is the way, walk ye in it." (Isa. xxx : 21.) In 
the Christian system, the Paraclete, the Holy Sprit, is as the carrier- 
pigeon of heaven, to bear to men's souls messages from the realms 
of Light and Love. It is a light, a guide, a warning, a presence, 
ever near. It is a voice without a sound, a deep and calm reveal- 
ing, which can only be heard by the inward ear in the profound 
silence of the soul. In answer to the scholar, in " The Dialogue 
on the Supersensual Life," Behmen answers the question, " How 
may I see God and hear Him speak? " in these words: " When 
thou canst for a moment throw thyself into that where no creature 
dwelleth (that is, beyond all sensible images), then thou hearest 
what God speaketh. If thou canst for awhile cease from thy own 
thinking and willing, thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God." 
This state was called by the devout Kempis " peaceful vacancy," 
— a state of mind entirely passive, a spiritual" inertia, where the 
soul acts only as it is acted upon, and is all rapt suspension, and 
all the quivering, palpitating chords of its life are still. Then the 
True Light, in its radiant splendor rains down from the opened 
heavens, upon it, and gently lifts it to a higher plane of thought 
and feeling. All genuine poets understand the relation of silence 
of the soul to inspiration. Whittier in his poem of " The Vision 
of Echard," says of him : — 

" He felt the heart of silence 

Throb with a soundless word; 
And by the inward ear alone 
A spirit's voice he heard* 



98 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

And the spoken word seemed written 

On air, and wave, and sod; 
And the bending walls of sapphire 

Blazed with the thought of God." 

Longfellow, who seems to be penetrated with a feeling of the 
nearness and influence of the spiritual realm of life, says, in his 
" Sound of the Sea:" 

There conies to us at times from the unknown 

And inaccessible solitudes of being 

The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul; 
And inspirations that we deem our own 

Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing 

Of things beyond our reason or control." 

The silence of the heart is always full of voiceless words from 
God and heaven. If the soul would listen, and banish all other 
sounds, it could hear the inward word, and the spiritual ear would 
vibrate with a responsive echo of the Divine Thought. The 
silence of the soul is a vacuum, and the life and light of the ever- 
present heavens comes in with spontaneous alacrity to fill the void, 

"Hearken, hearken! 

God speaketh to thy soul, 
Using the supreme voice which doth confound 
All Life with consciousness of Deity, 

All senses into one, — 
As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John 

(For whom did backward roll 
The cloud-gate of the future), turned to see 
The voice that spake. It speaketh now 
Through the regular breath of the calm creation." 

Inspiration is not, and cannot properly be, predicated of a vol- 
ume, by whomsoever written. It is not the quality of a boo7c, but 
the state of a soul that is God-moved. In what we call intuition, 
it is a sudden flash of the God-light within the mind. This may 
be prolonged as a divine twilight while an author writes a poem or 
an essay. But books, as the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Koran, 
or the Bible, are not inspired, but only the minds of the authors. 



THE DIVINE LAW OP . CUKE. 99 

Inspiration is the state of a soul that is first in a spiritual inertia, 
and then, moved by a divine impulsion, it mounts upward into 
God's sunning, and, in the great God-light of the heavens, sees 
truth in its reality, because it comes into sympathetic relations 
with the action of the One and Universal Mind. In this state we 
can say with the Christ : " The words I speak unto you I speak 
not of myself," or, as it is said in the second Epistle of Peter, 
when properly translated : "Prophecy [or the speaking from an 
inward, Divine impulse] came not at any time from the will of 
man [or from any purpose or volitional effort], but holy men of 
God spake as they were moved [that is, actuated or impelled] 
by the Holy Spirit." (2 Pet. i: 21.) A person in the exalted 
form of mental action which we call inspiration is conscious of 
"being in a state rather than of making an effort. 

In closing this chapter I wish to call the reader's thoughtful 
attention to two remarks. 1. God never designed to give to a few 
persons in the history of the world a monopoly of inspiration from 
Him, but it is the privilege of all. 2. Inspiration is not merely 
an illumination of the intellect, but a quickened activity of every 
department of our nature, — an impartation of life, health, and 
peace to the whole man. Life is One and Universal. Inspira- 
tion, in the sense of an influx of life from God, is seen everywhere 
throughout the three kingdoms of nature. As Paul expresses it : 
" There is one God who is above all, and through all, and in you 
all." (Eph. iv : 6.) Every atom of the globe is alive. Even 
decay and death are vital processes. There is no " inanimate mat- 
ter," nor dead forces. In man we have the highest manifestation 
of life, but it is not confined to him nor limited to the animal king- 
dom. Life is exhibited everywhere, but not the same expression 
of it as in man and animals. " The life which works in your 
organized frame," said Leon, "is but an exalted condition of the 
power which occasions the accretion of particles into this crystalline 
mass. The quickening force of nature through every form of 
being is the same." (Panihea: or, The Spirit of Nature, by 
Robert Hunt, p. 51.) Says one of the most distinguished think 



100 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

ers of the present age, Herbert Spencer, in the Westminster 
Review: " Tlie characteristic which, manifested iu a high degree, 
we call Life, is a characteristic manifested in a lower degree by 
so-called inanimate objects." The celebrated Dr. C. G. Cams 
remarks: " The idea of Life is coextensive with Universal Nature. 
The individual or integral parts of nature are the members ; uni- 
versal nature is the total and complex organism. The relations of 
inorganic to organized bodies exist only by reason of this ; hence, 
too, the universal connection, the combination, the never-ceasing 
action and re-action of all the powers of nature, producing the vast 
and magnificent whole of the world, — an action and re-action 
which would be impossible were not all pervaded by a single prin- 
ciple of life." {The Kingdoms of Nature; their Life and 
Affinity. Translated from the German in Taylor's Scientific 
Memoirs. Yol. I., p. 223.) 

On this subject I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting 
the eloquent language of Prof. Grinclon, a Swedenborgian scholar 
and philosopher. " We must never attempt to think of life in any 
of its manifestations apart from or independently of God. Life is 
uncreate, and wherever life is He is. The same grand principles 
which we find at the summit of creation, or in the intelligence of 
man, and which we acknowledge unhesitatingly to be by influx of 
the Divine Life, are embodied in every kingdom below man, in 
another and humbler manner, — animals, plants, and minerals, 
severally and in turn presenting them, after the likeness of 
descending octaves." {Life: Its Nature, Varieties, and Phe- 
nomena, p. 541.) 

Life, and health, which is a mode or state of life, may come to 
us as an inbreathing or inspiration from God through the ever- 
present heavens, or it may come to us through the Universal Life 
of nature. The natural and the Divine are one and the same. 
To be in harmony and sympathy with nature is to be in union 
with God, which is life, health, and peace. Disease is what it has 
been instinctively called in common language, a disorder \ or a want 
of harmony with the Universal Life. For this Intelligent and 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 101 

Omnipresent Life of nature, from the first moment of our existence, 
is employed in building up organs, casting off worn out matter, 
repairing waste, and keeping the whole system in vigorous health, 
wholeness, and blissful harmony unless we obstruct its action by that 
mysterious power of the individual which we call free will. When 
we float in the current of the Universal Life, and make no effort 
to row against the stream, and our desires, aspirations, and voli- 
tions are in concord with the Divine operation in nature, then the 
heart beats time to the harmonious music of the heavens, and no 
longer, like a muffled drum, marks the measures of a funeral 
march to the grave. There may be an inspiration of health, as 
well as an exaltation of thought and feeling, for these are the whole 
of life, and their harmonized activity is spiritual health, which is 
translated with divine celerity into a physical expression in the 
bodily organism. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THEOPNEUSTY, OR THE DIVINE AFFLATUS. 

Tlie word at the head of this chapter, at which I hope the reader 
will not he startled from its unusual appearance, is derived from 
a Greek term used by Paul in speaking of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures. It is a word that has been employed to some extent 
by German writers, but has not been much used in English. Paul 
declares that all scripture is theopneustos, or given by a Divine 
afflatus. In Schleusner the word is defined afflatu divino actus, 
divino quodam spiritu afflatus, that which is effected by a Divine 
afflatus, an influence from some Divine spirit. Robinson defines 
it as " God inspired, given from God." lb is used by Plutarch 
in relation to dreams. Cicero, in the oration for Archias, speaks 
of the poet as one who was breathed upon or into by some Divine 
spirit, — poetam quasi divino spiritu inflari. Plato held the same 
view with regard to poetry. He believed that the poet was often 
so inspired that he said things that he did not himself fully under- 
stand. 

" Himself from God he could not free ; 
He builded better than he knew." 

Joscphus, who was a cotemporary of Paul, in his first book against 
Apion, speaks of the tiuenty-two sacred books of the Jews as hav- 
ing been written by an inspiration which came from God (smra 
ir;f Intpoiav xr t v knb rov 6eov s ) 1 or according to a breathing upon 

102 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CUBE. 103 

them of God. The mystic philosopher, the Alexandrian Jew, 
Philo, in his account of his mission to the Emperor Caligula, 
speaks of the Scriptures as theochristic oracles (fo'o/o^o-ru Ao^m), 
or oracles given from a Divine anointing, a symbolic expression 
for the reception of the Holy Spirit, the sphere of the Divine Life, 
and the Divine Intelligence. (1 John ii : 27.) 

Though we may reach a different result in the end, yet we can 
say with Gaussen at the beginning of his work on the inspiration 
of the Scriptures : " Our design in this book, by the help of God, 
and the authority of his Word, is to expound, defend, and estab- 
lish the Christian doctrine of inspiration." 

If I have any comprehension of a true Christian philosophy and 
the spirit of the teaching of Jesus, it tends to make general what 
has been viewed as partial in its application, and the exclusive 
property of the few. Thus the Divine incarnation is not confined 
to one solitary person of history, but it can be predicated in a 
degree of all humanity. The whole of humanity embodies more 
of God than any one individual of the race. The principle of 
mediation, by a priestly aristocracy, is removed by Christianity, 
and every individual believer is brought face to face with God and 
made his own priest. According to Paul, or the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, every Christian is a priest, and even a 
high priest, and has access to the holy of holies by a new and liv- 
ing way, that is, he has the privilege of the most intimate com- 
munion with God, without its coming through the intervening 
medium of an external priesthood. With regard to prophecy, or 
the speaking from an inward, Divine impulse, one of the highest 
functions and uses of the truly spiritual life, according to Paul, 
Moses prayed that all the Lord's people might become prophets, 
and that He would put His Spirit upon them all (Num. xi: 29), 
which was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, in the outpouring of 
the Spirit upon all classes, when the Christian dispensation was 
opened, and when it emerged from its external, Judaistic shell. 
This has been illustrated in the whole course of the historical 
development of the true Christian life. So, with regard to inspire 



104 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

tion, it is contrary to the whole spirit and genius of Christianity—* 
which, in all its essential principles, tends to make the gifts of 
God universal — to confine it to the few Jews who penned the 
books or tracts that, collectively, constitute the sacred canon of 
Scripture. The Divine charismata, or spiritual gifts, were not to 
be the possession of the favored few, who were to have a monopoly 
of them, but were to become the common property of all true 
believers. Paul affirms that all scripture is a theopneusty, or 
given by a Divine afflatus. This is true in its broadest sense. 
The Word of God, as defined by Christ, is truth, and all truth is 
from God, its primal fount. No real truth in any department of 
human knowledge can be sundered from the Divine Mind any 
more than we can break the connection of a solar ray with the 
central sun of our system. The continuity is unbroken and indis- 
soluble. The Greek word for scripture, and the Latin-English 
term which we have, signify an act of writing, and, by a figure of 
speech, that which is written. So far as the action is a recording 
or external manifestation of truth, the writer must be in a recep- 
tive relation to God, for we can no more create a truth than we 
can a world. If the truth does not come to us immediately, but 
through some intervening medium, it is none the less from God. 
The water of the lake comes to our houses through various pipes, 
but it is still the water of the lake. If all power is of God, and 
without Him we can do nothing, which are fundamental verities of 
the Christian Creed, we can no more commit a truth to its external 
expression in writing without God than we can live without Him. 
If it were otherwise, the Divine Being would be unnecessary, and 
man would become an independent existence. But words sometimes 
have a meaning different from their etymological or radical signifi- 
cance. Thus the word Bible means simply a book. Any book is, 
according to the primary meaning of the term, a Bible, and it is 
certainly a Divine revelation to us so far as it makes known any 
truth that we did not before possess among our intellectual treas- 
ures. So in Arabic Al Koran means the Book, the Bible. But, 
by a limitation of their proper and natural meaning, the Bible has 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUJIE. 105 

come to mean a particular book, — the Jewish and Christian sacred 
writings, — and the Koran the work of Mohammed. In this limited 
meaning of the word scripture, or writing, or Bible, it is still true 
that all the truth they contain is from a Divine afflatus. For it is 
a maxima Veritas, a supreme verity, that all truth is from Grod, 
and can be traced back to Him as its primal source. 

Inspiration is not a miraculous phenomenon, but an every-day 
occurrence, and arises naturally and necessarily from the relation 
that the human soul sustains to Grod, the Father of Spirits, as He 
is expressively called. Some of the profoundest Christian philoso- 
phers have taken this view. Among these we must place Schlei- 
ermacher, whose whole being was pervaded with a genuine Christ- 
ian spirit acquired in early life among the Moravians. He rejects 
the idea of all miraculous inspiration, and attributes to the sacred 
writers only what Plato and Cicero attributed to the poets, — affla- 
tus spiritus divini, — a breathing of the Divine spirit, "a divine 
action of nature, an interior power like the other forces of nature." 
With this view De Wette and many of the Grerman writers agree. 
Inspiration, as I have shown in the previous chapter, being a 
quickening or vivifying of the intuitive faculty of the soul, may 
exist in different degrees of intensity. A writing can never long 
maintain its claim to being an inspired production unless it rises 
above the ordinary level of thought and expression to an unusual 
height. Hence, many of the books that were once accepted as a 
part of the sacred canon have been dropped out of it, and only 
those have been left that seem to bear this impress and seal of 
" high divinity," on the Darwinian principle of the survival of the 
fittest. Micnrelis rejected large portions of what we accept as the 
Bible. Luther threw out the Epistle of James. Swedenborg 
expurgated from the Old Testament several of its books, and all 
of the New Testament except the four Grospels and the Apocalypse, 
and yet held the highest possible view of the inspiration, and even 
absolute divinity, of the remaining portions of the volume. But 
would it not be better to accept the Pauline doctrine, that "all 
scripture (or writing) is given by inspiration of God, ,, and that all 



106 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

holy men of God write as they are moved by an inward, Divina 
impulse and spiritual stimulus, but possess this in different 
degrees of intensity. Even Gaussen, the most ultra-advocate of a 
mechanical, verbal inspiration, admits that the Divine influence 
was not felt in the same degree by all the writers of the Bible. 
^Tkeopneusty, p. 3G.) But the idea that the Book is inspired, 
and not the writers of it, is simply an impossibility. Such a propo- 
sition, to use the language of Herbert Spencer, contains not only 
what is "unknowable" but even that which is "unthinkable." 
He asserts also " that every word of the Bible is as really from 
man as it is from God. In a certain sense the Epistle to the 
Romans is entirely a letter of Paul ; in a still higher sense, the 
Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter of God." ( Theopneusty, 
p. 39. ) I am not certain that the same might not be predicated 
of one of the religious poems of Whittier, as that entitled, " My 
Psalm," and that most beautiful production, "The Eternal Good- 
ness." Here the divine idea is clothed in the choicest language, 
and so far as these poems contain any spiritual truth, that truth 
must be ultimately referred to the Divine Mind as its origin and 
emanating source. As I have before affirmed, we can no more think 
without God than we can exist without Him, and the same may be 
affirmed of the representation of our thoughts in writing or by 
vocal utterance. I do not wish to deny the inspiration of what 
the Christian world calls the Bible. I accept that doctrine, but 
protest in the name of humanity against confining it to such nar- 
row limits, shutting it up within the contracted boundaries of 
Palestine, and confining it to a few individuals. The land of the 
Jews is not the only place where the soul can come into fellow- 
ship with the life of God, or commune with the Divine Mind. It 
is not the only point on the earth's surface where the heavens 
meet the earth, and commingle their life with ours. An inspired 
apostle has said that " God is not far from every one of us," and that 
"in Him we live, and move, and have our being." (Actsxvii: 27, 
28 ) He is as near to us as our souls are to our bodies, and is 
our inmost life. All the phenomena of our life have a closer con- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 107 

neetion with Him than most persons are conscious of, or ever come, 
to believe. God's being and activity are coextensive. The one 
is as ubiquitous as the other. As no person can be outside the 
bounds of the Divine existence, — since God is everywhere and in 
all, — so no one can be insulated from Him and His ceaseless 
influence. Most persons are stone blind to this great truth, and 
the consciousness of it may exist in ten thousand different degrees, 
but in the highest degree ever realized in the history of the race 
it existed in the breast of Jesus the Christ. He could say: "The 
words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father 
that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." (John xiv: 10.) As 
the clay statue which God is represented as making had no life 
until it was breathed into it by the Divine Being, so all life is a 
ceaseless inspirution, an influx that has been continued to us 
through every moment of our existence. It is self-evident that 
what is the origin and perpetual support of life must be to us the 
fountain of health, both of mind and body. Health is as much the 
gift of God as is life itself, for it is only a state of life. To be 
made consciously a " partaker of the Divine nature " is to find in 
Him " the health of our countenance." As the Divine Being is 
the One and only Life, and our life is incessantly derived from. 
Him, then it is certain that it did not have its beginning at our 
birth, nor will it end with what we call death. Thus, to know 
God is eternal life. There is no future life. We never go beyond 
the present. We reach that point but never pass it. Tomorrow 
never comes. Our existence is inclosed within the divine moment, 
the eternal now. Immortality is not something to be looked for 
in an impossible future that we never reach, but is, as both Jesus 
and Buddha taught, to be realized in the living present. All 
time and all space, as Kant and Swedenborg affirm, are in our- 
selves, — that is, within the enclosure of our spiritual being. As 
the body is a compound of all that the world contains, so the soul 
of man has in it the germ of all there is in the spiritual realm. In 
Buddhism it is taught that man, by meditation, and by coming to 
know the unreality and impermanency of the world of sense and 



108 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

the human body, can attain to a state of exemption from sickness, 
old age, and death. (Hegel's Philosophy of History, p. 177.) Does 
not Jesus teach essentially the same thing in his doctrine of the 
attainment of eternal life here and now ? As Shakyamuni Gau- 
tama became a Buddha (which signifies " one who knows") by the 
reception of a light from a higher realm, so Jesus became the 
Christ, the anointed or knowing one, in a similar way, and taught 
that through him our existence could become so linked to the 
Divine Being as to be exempt from death, and, by viewing the root 
of our individuality in the One and the All, to live everlasting life 
in the present. 



CHAPTER XV. 

INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OP COMMON SENSE. 

Sir William Hamilton very truly says that " our cognitions, it is 
evident, are not all second-hand." This is the key-note of his 
philosophy. It means, or ought to mean, when properly under- 
stood, that all our knowledge is not derived from other minds by 
instruction, but arises from within the mind itself, and is in reality 
a Divine inspiration and comes to us from the living "Word, the 
eternal Logos, which is " the true light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world." Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, 
which is a treatise on the immortality of the soul, long ago said : 
Omnia autem in re consensio omnium gentium lex naturce pu- 
tanda est, the agreement of all nations in anything must be viewed 
as a law of nature. On this ground he rests the proof of the 
existence of God and the reality of a future life. But this uni- 
versal consent to a doctrine can be accounted for on no theory so 
well as to attribute it to an emanation from the Divine Mind. 

Common sense, or the spontaneous action of the mind, is equiva- 
lent to an intuitive perception. It is an involuntary cognition. It 
is a knowledge that comes to us without any volitional or con- 
scious effort of our own, and without any process of reasoning, and 
is really a Divine revelation. Much of our knowledge, especially 
that which relates to the practical uses and duties of life, comes to 
us in this way, and all that comes to us from without by instruc- 
tion and from books, unless it can be made to rest on this basis 

109 



110 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

and be made one with the decisions of the sensus communis, or 
universal sense, is merely external, and has little value. These 
" cognitions at first hand," as Sir William Hamilton calls them, — 
these fundamental facts, feelings, and beliefs, — are seen in their 
own light and prove themselves. The number of self-evident 
truths is much greater than the limited number mentioned as such 
in works on Logic and Mental Science, and the Mathematics. As 
the essential conditions of all knowhedge, the decisions of the com- 
mon sense must be accepted as true. " To suppose their falsehood 
is to suppose that we are created capable of intelligence, in order 
to be made the victims of delusion ; that God is a deceiver, and 
the root of our nature a lie." ( Wight's Philosophy of Sir IVil- 
liam Hamilton, p. 21.) 

The voice of nature, when properly understood, is the voice of 
God. Hence, the maxim, vox populi, vox Dei. The phrase com- 
mon sense, so much used in philosophy, and which was the foun- 
dation of the systems of Reid, and of Sir William Hamilton, 
means an intuitive perception of the mind. It has been denomin- 
ated by a French author ( Chanet, Traite de V Esprit) as the uni- 
versal reason, or natural logic. The truths thus acquired were 
called by Leibnitz iDstincts and the light of nature, which is only 
another way of affirming their Divine origin. They have been 
called intuitions, or an inward seeing and self-evident truths, or 
those which prove themselves. But they are really impressions, 
or a light from a higher sky, of which the mind is in a state of 
passive receptivity. They arc a Divine revelation, an inspiration, 
or, as Swedenborg calls it, a state of perception or illustration, 
that is, a condition of mental lucidity occasioned by an interior, 
spiritual illumination. God is our Light as well as our Life. 

This seems to have been acknowledged in all ages. Hesiod 
closes his poem entitled, Works and Days, with these remarkable 
words : — 

" The word proclaimed by the concordant voice 
Of mankind fails not: for in man speaks God." 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. Ill 

There is a remarkable passage in Aristotle's Ethics which gave 
rise to much discussion. " The problem is this : What is the 
beginning or principle of motion in the soul ? Now, it is evident 
that as God is in the universe and the universe in God, that the 
Divinity in us is also, in a certain sort, the universal mover of the 
mind. For the principle of reason is not reason, but something 
better. Now what can we say is better than even science, except 
God ? " {Ethics. Liber VII., c. 14.) According to this, all intel- 
lectual action is originated by the Divine Life within us. 

The principle of common sense, or the natural light which all 
men possess, is from the Divine Logos, or Word, the emanative 
sphere of the Divine Intellect. It has been variously denomin- 
ated by different philosophers as instinct, intuition, feeling, belief, 
faith, inspiration, and revelation. Jacobi, who has been justly 
called the German Plato, and who is to be classed among the pro- 
foundest of Christian philosophers, makes the foundation of all 
knowledge to be faith, by which he means a feeling of the truth. 
In the mental economy belief takes the place of knowledge. When 
it rises from probability, its lowest form, to certainty, by which is 
meant an undoubting assurance, it comes next to knowledge. But 
faith is more than an intellectual belief. It is a mode of know- 
ing. In its highest degree it is an intuition, an interior percep- 
tion. It is that which affords a knowledge of supersensible things, 
and gives us the assurance of their reality and truth. Whatever 
we feel to be true, we are compelled to believe. In this way we 
gain a knowledge of what is unattainable by sense. Thus, faith 
becomes the highest mode of knowledge. It is the " substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Heb. xi : 1.) 
It is, also, as Paul affirms, the gift of God, and, consequently, an 
inspiration. (Eph. ii: 8.) Fichtesays: " All my conviction is 
only belief, and it proceeds from feeling or sentiment, and not from 
the discursive understanding." When we wish to express the 
highest possible certainty of anything, we say vtefeel it to be true, 
and no logical demonstration can add force to this inward persua- 
sion. Ancillon, whose system is in harmony with that of Jacob i, 



112 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

says that, " Belief, in the philosophical sense, means the apprehen- 
sion without proof, reasoning, or deduction of any kind, of those 
higher truths which belong to the supersensible world, and not to 
the world of appearances. This internal, universal sense, this high- 
est power of mental vision in man, seems to have much in it of the 
instinctive, and may, therefore, be appropriately styled intellectual 
instinct. For on the one hand it manifests itself through sudden, 
rapid, uniform, resistless promptings, and on the other hand these 
promptings relate to objects which lie, not within the domain of 
the senses, but belong to the supersensible world." ( Wight's 
Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, p. 152.) 

Luther must have had some such idea of belief as an inward 
feeling or intuition of the truth when he affirmed " that all things 
have their root in belief, which we can neither perceive nor com- 
prehend. He who would make this belief visible, manifest, and 
conceivable has sorrow for Ins pains." 

Anselm, one of the deepest thinkers of the mediaeval age of the 
Church, adopted the maxim, crede ut intelligas, believe, that 
j-ou may understand, where faith is taken to be one of the highest 
forms of knowing. Algazel, of Bagdad, in the Latin translation 
of his works, makes it a fundamental principle that faith is the 
root of knowledge, — radix cognitionis fides. But by faith, we 
must always bear in mind, is not meant a cold, intellectual appre- 
hension of the truth, but a feeling of the truth. Tins interior 
light, call it what you will, — common sense, the light of nature, 
instinct, intuition, impression, faith, the Divine Word that came to 
the prophets, a revelation, an inspiration, or even the Holy Spirit, 
— is the highest authority within us, and the divinest light for 
human guidance. It should always be consulted in the cure of 
disease. The physician should be influenced by it in the selection 
of his therapeutic devices. In the mind of the patient, when left 
free to act without obstruction or interference, it will give a more 
unerring prescription than the science of medicine can furnish. 
For what the patient feels ought to be done is the best thing to do. 
It is oftentimes, if we understood it aright, a prescription written 



TIIE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 113 

by the finger of the Deity within us. By whatever name we call it, 
it is a Divine oracle within us, whose utterances are less ambigu- 
ous and more unerring than those of Dodona or Delphi. 

With some slight modification of the language, which does not 
affect the idea, I can say with S. Baring-Gould : The question of 
the truth of what the Church calls inspiration is one I do not dis- 
cuss. We have a revelation in our own nature. An historical 
revelation, an apocalypse to others in the past, is that which we 
can never satisfactorily prove to ourselves. The revelation which 
we have in the depths of our own nature — the light and life of 
the eternal Word there — never grows old, and it is always there to 
be questioned according to our spiritual needs, and to be sought 
unto for guidance, as the Jew went to the Urim and Thummim, 
and the Greek to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. On the 
authority of this revelation, and not on tradition, oral or written, 
will the Church of the future be founded. (Preface to Origin 
and Development of Religious Thought.) There is in the pene- 
tralia, or inmost recesses, of all souls a region where a Divine 
Word will respond to our sincere craving for truth, and where 
Divine secrets hidden from the senses will be revealed to us. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OP PRAYER. 

Prayer may be defined to be the outward expression of an 
inward desire, — the reaching out of the mind to grasp that which 
will satisfy a conscious need. It is the Divine method of opening 
the soul upward to receive what God is more than willing to 
give. 

Prayer is one of the chief elements of a religious life. It is 
inseparable from religion, and a valuable specific for the mental 
and spiritual disturbances that underlie all diseases. It is the 
vehicle, the medium, through which spiritual medicine is given. It 
is a natural instinct of the soul. It is as natural for us, under cer- 
tain circumstances, to look to some supreme power above us, or 
within us, for help as it is for birds of passage, at certain seasons 
of the year, to go South. And God never impressed an instinct- 
ive tendency upon any living thing, from the least to the greatest, 
without furnishing the means for its satisfactory gratification. If, 
in distress of body or unhappiness of mind, we are drawn by a 
spiritual instinct to God in prayer, it is because it is a pail of the 
Divine plan that we should thus find relief. I am aware that it is 
unusual to class the exercise of prayer among hygienic agencies ; 
and medical science has not given it a place among their therapeutic 
devices. But this is owing to the incomprehensive and superficial 
philosophy of life and health that prevails among medical men. 
Prayer is a conscious recognition of our dependent condition and 

1H 






THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 115 

subjection to powers unseen, but superior to our own. There are 
certain flowers that, from a vital impulse implanted in them, con- 
stantly turn towards the sun to receive his vivifying light and heat. 
So a humble consciousness of dependence that causes the soul to 
look to God fits us to receive what we most need. Thus, there is 
at the same time a moral and hygienic efficacy in prayer. The 
influence of a calm trust and faith expressing itself in prayer, 
uttered or unexpressed, over the functions of organic life, cannot 
be over-estimated. It is a spiritual and potential influence and 
force brought to bear upon the hidden spring of disease. It is 
one of the most potent prophylactic agencies against the inception 
and cause of all morbid conditions. 

The proposal of Prof. Tyndall, some years ago, to subject the 
efficacy of prayer for the sick to what he considered a scientific 
test, somewhat shocked the religious world, and yet seems in itself 
a reasonable one. To divide a hospital into two departments, one 
of which is to be subjected to the prayer-cure, and the other to the 
ordinaiy system of medication, is a test of the therapeutic value of 
the two methods of cure that no real Christian or believer in the 
sanative efficacy of spiritual forces need fear to accept. But the 
patients should be expected to pray for themselves as well as to 
be subjected to the intercession of others. The believer in the 
curative efficacy of prayer would have the advantage in one respect, 
— that his remedy was not a poison, which cannot be said of many 
of the drugs that are employed in medicine. It should be borne 
in mind that it is only one kind of prayer that will save the sick, 
— the prayer of faith. (James v: 15.) This we venture to 
affirm will be found more efficacious than any system of drug 
medication. But it must include the combined prayer and faith 
of both the patient and physician. It is as much an established 
principle in the science of medicine that faith will make us whole 
as it is that quinine is a specific for intermittent fever, or iodine 
for scrofulous swellings. 

The efficacy of prayer upon ourselves can be defended upon 
philosophical grounds. In certain conditions prayer is as natural 



116 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

as our respiration. A man in distress spontaneously cries for help 
when he believes it possible that succor is in hailing distance ; and 
the true religious spirit always feels that God is thus near to it, 
and is "a present help in time of trouble." The spiritual man is 
in speaking, and even whispering, nearness to the Divine Being, 
the Central Life. Such a one does not, in time of need, stop to 
ask whether prayer is logical or scientific. He does not even pray 
from a sense of duty, but because he cannot very well help it. 
It is a spontaneous movement of the religious spirit within Mm, 
and is the outward manifestation of an instinctive spiritual im- 
pulse, and is as natural a movement of the soul as certain reflex 
muscular movements are in the body under the influence of the 
proper sensational stimulus. It is no more natural for a merry 
heart to laugh or to sing than it is for a troubled soul to pray. 
(James v : 13.) All emotional excess of either bliss or pain in 
the soul must find an outlet, or disease is the result. An over- 
strained boiler without a safety-valve will burst. Prayer is the 
valve that opens of itself when the painful ebullition of our feel- 
ings reaches a certain degree of pressure, and thus life and health 
are preserved. In times of strong emotion we instinctively feel 
that we must do something to relieve ourselves, for such states of 
mind cannot long continue without creating great disturbance in 
the physiological functions. There are various modes of relieving 
the over-excited feelings, and liberating the pent up suffering 
within us, such us walking the room, climbing the mountain, or 
visiting foreign lands; but none of them are so efficacious as 
prayer. A truly religious man, in times of great mental disturb- 
ance, turns to God in prayer as instinctively as the hungry infant 
seeks the maternal breast, or the young fowl, in time of danger, 
runs to the shelter of the protecting wing of its parent. Thus, he 
finds rest, and health, and peace. 

It is manifestly impossible to construct a theory of prayer that 
would perfectly satisfy the so-called man of science. And what 
goes under the name of science, much of which is a mere surface 
knowledge, does not meet the deeper needs of the religious nature 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 117 

of mankind . ±he one is as the body, the other as the soul of 
things. Much that is pompously called science is to the spiritual 
nature of man like the husks on which the prodigal son fed, but 
came near dying of hunger. 

The theory of prayer that satisfies the profoundest thinkers of 
the religious world i3 that which views it as a spiritual instinct 
and a necessity of man's inner nature. " The instinct of prayer is 
the most manifest of all the religious instincts, and is more nearly 
self-directive than any other of them ; and it is so strong that, at 
times, it breaks through every philosophical theory of necessity, or 
pantheism, or atheism itself." (Instinct, Lowell Lectures, 1871 ; by 
P. A. Chadbourne, LL.D., p. 283.) All our instincts arc given 
us by the Creator for our preservation, our guidance, and our 
good. Hence, the instinct of prayer, when we follow its prompt- 
ings, must lead to blessedness. This is the philosophical view of 
it. Instinct is designed of God to be a pillar of cloud by day 
and a pillar of fire by night to go before us, to conduct cur march 
to the realization of our supreme good. As S. Baring-Gould has 
said: "We have absolutely no instance in the whole world of 
animated nature of an instinctive penchant without a correspond- 
ing object to which it tends, and which can satisfy that penchant." 
Thus, the spiritual instinct of prayer leads to an inter-communion 
of the soul with God, and finds its satisfaction in union with the 
only Life, and the reception of good from that supreme source. 
Tie who would live tranquilly, wisely, and healthfully will find 
somewhere in his own soul the guiding light of his course. To 
follow anything outside of this, only so far as it meets a response 
within, is to be led blindly by an ignis fatuus, a specious, but 
bewildering and fallible, guide. It is grasping at a shadow and 
missing the substance. 

The true spirit of prayer cannot be shut up within the limits of 
any stereotyped formulas, but will find vent in a liturgy of its own 
creation. By a creative force inherent in its own essence it will 
find an ultimate expression in forms that it calls into existence at 
the time. We are speaking of prayer in its reality, and not the 



118 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

semblance of it so common in the outward worship of the religious 
world. It is only real prayer — the crying out of the soul unto 
the living God — that can have any therapeutic value to either 
mind or body. An ill prayer, as Mrs. Browning says, God uses 
as a foolishness, to which He gives no answer. The mere read- 
ing or saying a prayer over a sick man or a sinner will not restore 
the one to health or convert the other any more than the repeti- 
tion of the burial service at the grave will raise the dead to life- 
It must be the spontaneous and almost irrepressible out-pouring of 
the thoughts and feelings of the soul into the listening ear of a 
present God. It is only a certain degree of mental pressure, or 
intensity of feeling, that can generate the real spirit of prayer, and 
give efficacy to it. All else is a worthless formalism. 

The longer a man practices medicine, the less confidence he has 
in material and external remedies. Their value is a perpetually- 
diminishing and vanishing quantity, until he ceases to take them 
himself or administer them to his own family, and to others only 
from the force of habit, and in the smallest doses. The more pro- 
foundly a man studies the science of medicine, the more he sees the 
comparative worthlessness of all chemical preparations and combi- 
nations, whether taken into the stomach or applied to the external 
surface of the body, and the more highly he will estimate the 
value of spiritual remedies, or those that act from within outward, 
or from the center to the circumference of our being. He will 
become a convert, in spite of all his medical books, to one of the 
principles of the system of Hahnemann, — that the smaller the 
quantity of the drug the higher the potency ; and the dilution or 
trituration that brings the drug down to the dividing line between 
something and nothing, so that you cannot tell which it is, has the 
greatest sanative efficiency. This is the nearest possible approach, 
on a material plane of thought, to the adoption of a science of 
spiritual medicine. 



CHAPTER XVH. 

CHRIST AND DISEASE; OR, THE POWER OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFB 
OVER THE BODY. 

The highest form of existence is that of a true religious life, 
which, in its essence, is a harmonious union of goodness and truth, 
love and wisdom, benevolence and faith, in the character and 
activity of the individual. Where intellect and love are harmoni- 
ously united and blended, and act in perfect concordance, the result- 
ing product is spiritual power. The omnipotence of God is the union 
of infinite wisdom and infinite love, or the knowing how to do what 
His goodness inclines Him to do. He who is, in this respect, an 
image of God, partakes of His spiritual almightiness. When a true 
philosophy is taken into the mount of transfiguration, and trans- 
formed into a divinely human religion, its face shines from the 
radiance of a higher sun, and possesses a power over ourselves and 
others that it could not otherwise have. When philosophy and 
religion are combined into a harmonious unity, each adds power 
and influence to the other. All religion should be made scientific, 
and all science religious. There is no inharmony between them 
when both are properly understood. The attempt to demonstrate 
the perfect agreement and concordance of the two, which is being 
made by many at the present time, is a laudable one, and promo- 
tive of the best interests of the race, though to accomplish this the 
current religious creeds must part company with some of their irra- 
tional dogmas, and science give up many of its unproved assump- 

119 



120 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

tions. But this will be no loss to either, as it is only eliminating 
an element of weakness from each. 

All the most influential thinkers of the past — men who have 
mingled their thoughts with the current of the world's life, and 
given shape and direction to its historic development — have been 
profoundly religious men. As an example of these " world-his- 
torical" persons, as Neander would call them, we may mention 
Socrates. He was a man of a great and, in that age, unusual 
religious fervor, and subjaot to those temporary exaltations of the 
mind which he made no great mistake in looking upon as Divine 
visits, for the higher religious activities, and the intellectual illu- 
mination that accompanies them, bring the soul into a nearness 
to God. In this state, all Divine and spiritual things lose in us 
their feeling of remoteness. 

Among the ancients, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and Plato were 
men in whom the religious element in their nature gave elevation 
to their intellectual range. In more modern times, we may men- 
tion Schelling, who has been called the German Plato, and Fichte, 
who might with equal propriety be denominated the German 
Socrates ; and, in addition, we might name Schleirermacher and 
Neander; and even Hegel was a member of the church. In 
Emanuel Swedenborg we see a man in whom science and religion 
were so wedded as to render even a temporary divorce an impossi- 
bility. His intellect was always and everywhere religious, and his 
religion was at all times intellectual. He deserves above all men 
of modern history the appellation of the spiritual philosopher. The 
system of spiritual science which is unfolded in his voluminous 
writings, and exemplified in his remarkable experiences, is having 
a silent but powerful influence in moulding and modifying the 
religious beliefs and changing the thoughts of men, throughout 
Christendom, on spiritual things. This influence, though it falls 
upon the world as noiseless as the dews of night, will increase in 
the future. 

The founders of the great religions of the world were men in 
whom the intellect and the religious nature were blended more or 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 121 

less harmoniously. This is what gives their systems of doctrine 
such an almost unyielding grasp upon the minds of men, and such 
influence over so great masses of the world's population. Such 
men were Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and we may add Moham- 
med. In all these examples which we have given of spiritual 
power there is some common principle. Can we discover what it is ? 
It is that they were men of strong intellect, and were profoundly 
religious men. They were religious, not superficially, not in 
momentary and transient moods, but all through their being. Their 
religious fervor transported them into the third heavens, but also 
carried the intellect with it into a Divine realm of life and thought. 
Hence their thoughts, when given to others in their writings, have 
a Divine warmth and spiritual vitality in them, and are not mere 
cold and logical intellectual conceptions, like moonbeams reflected 
from polar ice. The religious nature exalted the intellect to a 
Divine realm of thought, where they became inspired, and recipi- 
ent of the living Word, the indwelling Logos, of which they 
became in a true sense the incarnations. In all such men, in a 
mitigated sense, the Word is made flesh and dwells among us. 
It is impossible to be spiritual in our intellectual conceptions with- 
out being religious. To reach the higher degrees of inspiration, or 
quickened intuition, without a fervor of religious feeling is as 
impossible as to fly without wings. 

The highest example in human history of the perfect union of 
the intellect with the religious nature, and the resultant spiritual 
power, is seen in Jesus the Christ. In him there was the most 
intimate blending of the purely human and the truly Divine, so 
that in his personality where the human nature ended and the 
Divinity commenced no one can perceive. The boundary line 
between the Godhead and manhood is not clearly drawn. There 
is in him a deification of humanity and a humanization of God, 
and somehow in him God comes very near to the souls of men. 
In him we witness the spectacle of a human nature and soul filled 
with God, — with all the fullness of God. But he expected, and 
expressed the wish, that all his disciples in every age should be, 



122 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

in this respect, a copy of the Master, — that they should be one 
with God as he and the Father were one. (John xvii: 20-23.) 
As the highest representation of God in human history, there is 
in his life, as unfolded in the Gospels, a revelation of the thoughts 
and feelings of God. No man can be actuated by a Divine influ- 
ence and afflatus without in some way, and to some extent, mani- 
festing the feelings of the Deity. But Paul affirms that God gave 
the Spirit to the Christ without measure, and the Divine love was 
the motive power of all his activity. He spent a large fraction of 
Jus public life in the cure of "all manner of sickness and disease " 
among the people. His activity seemed naturally to take that 
beneficent direction. So far as the Christ-principle is in us, we 
shall have power to do the same. The drift and current of our 
inner life will exhibit itself as a spontaneous impulse to do good 
to the souls and bodies of men. Jesus seemed to have a divinely 
clear conception of the spiritual origin of disease, and of the effi- 
cacy of spiritual remedies in its cure. He did not look upon sick- 
ness of the flesh as the real disease, but as the effect of an a 'priori 
spiritual malady ; and when this antecedent cause ceases to oper- 
ate, the morbid effect comes to an end. As Jesus the Christ was 
perpetually moved by a Divine influence and impulse in his career 
as the great Physician, it shows that in God there is a prepetual 
conatus, an irrepressible endeavor, an unchangeable willingness to 
heal our diseases of mind and body. In all our struggles against 
every morbid condition, within and without, we can, with unerr- 
ing certainty, count upon God and his omnipotent love as our 
unfailing ally in the battle with evil and suffering. If God be for 
us, what can prevail against us ? Here is the standing-ground of 
an assured and unyielding faith in Him for the cure of our own 
sicknesses and those of others through us. If I have any under- 
standing of the system of the Christ in the cure of disease, he 
found the cause of it in some prior disturbance of the spiritual 
principle in man, and he applied his healing power to the mental 
root of the malady. All his mighty works had a redemptive aim, 
that is, they were designed primarily to deliver men from spiritual 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 123 

evil. Matter was viewed by Mm as an unsubstantial appearance, 
and mind was the only reality. Through the restored and 
redeemed soul he healed the body of its diseases, both functional 
and organic. To illustrate his Divine method of cure, and to 
make it an available, practical system, will be the aim of all I 
have to say in the subsequent chapters of this volume. 



CHAPTER XVni. 

THE ANTAGONISM OP THE CHRIST-PRINCIPLE AND DISEASE, OR 
THE HEALING POWER OP JESUS. 

By the Christ-principle, or that by which Jesus became the 
Christ, I mean a spiritual intelligence. It is not science or knowl- 
edge on the plane of sense ; it is not a knowledge imparted by 
instruction from without, and imported into the mind, but arises 
from within, — the God-light in the soul, the living Word. Nor is 
it knowledge alone, a coldly luminous intellectual state, like moon- 
beams reflected from the snow fields on a winter's night, but it is 
an interior light that has in it the warmth of a Divine love. 

That Jesus, after the age of thirty years, exhibited a marvelous 
power of healing the sick without medicine, and which so far sur- 
passed the power of his contemporaries as to be deemed miraculous, 
is a well-established fact, and as well certified as the principal facts 
in the life of Alexander or Caesar. It is not improbable in itself ; 
and many marvelous cures have been effected in every subsequent 
age, and even in the century in which we live, that render it 
entirely credible. On this subject I cannot do better than to use 
the language of Dr. Hase, with some additions of my own. These 
so-called miracles cannot contradict the laws of the world, which 
are the constant expression of the Divine will, and the established 
Divine order. Therefore, amid all apparent contradictions, we 
must seek for an accordance with law. 

According to the Gospel narratives, his acts of healing were not 

124 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 125 

always unconnected with bodily contact, the imposition of the hands 
or other outward means. (Mark vii : 33 ; viii : 23. John ix : 6. 
Mat. viii: 16; xvii:21.) In this way they may have some 
relation to Rabbinical or Essene methods of cure, and in some 
measure communicable by instruction. This is rendered probable 
by its continuance in the apostolic church. (1 Cor. xii: 10, 28.) 
It has been supposed by some that Jesus spent his early life 
among the Essenes, who were called in Egypt Therapeutae, or 
healers. This may or may not be true. We have no historic 
evidence of it, and it is, in itself, a matter of little importance. 
But whatever means he used, the power of the Word and the Spirit 
was always predominant. He demanded as an indispensable con- 
dition a trustful submission, or an act of faith. From the lack of 
a state of receptivity, as a consequence of the absence of this need- 
ful mental state, his power of healing was not always exercised 
(Mark vi : 5), nor did all the sick who sought a cure find it 
(Mark i : 32, 34) . On one occasion, he healed only one out of a 
multitude of sick people. (John v: 3.) Perhaps all cures, by 
every method, are confined to ihe region where the power of the ' 
will and of faith over the body exists. These cures, therefore, are 
not witnout analogiesin all ages and countries, and may lieuce be 
reduced to the action of some spiritual law. A resemblance is 
afforded us in the cures effected by animal magnetism, but only so 
far as it contains a mysterious power over disease, arising out of 
the great life of nature; and perhaps, moreover, the means which 
Jesus used may have stood in some relation to magnetic or psycho- 
logical phenomena. But the marvelous poioer of Jesus appears 
far more like an intelligent mastery of nature by the soid. The 
mind of man, originally endowed with dominion over the earth 
recovered its old rights by the holy innocence of Jesus, conquer 
ing the unnatural power of disease and death. Here, therefore 
there was no violation of the laws of nature, but, on the contrary 
the disturbed order of the world here recovered its original har- 
mony and truth. Even the wonderful power exercised over exter- 
nal nature may be reduced under the same law, and may be under* 



126 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

stood according to an accelerated process of nature. (Hase's Life 
of Jesus, pp. 96-99.) 

Jesus lived in harmony with the perfect order of nature, that is, 
the will of God, which is expressed in nature, was his supreme 
law. What a person who thus comes into the true order of his 
life can do, the history of the world furnishes us but an imperfect 
means of knowing, from the paucity of examples of that state. A 
knowledge of nature's laws, and a life in harmony with the will of 
God, as expressed in what we call nature, invests the soul of man 
with a fraction of God's omnipotence. God is immanent in all 
natural law. To be perfectly natural is to attain to the blessed- 
ness and power of a life in God. When a divinely-illuminated 
intellect is wedded to an exalted state of the religious affections, 
such a man will be a Divine power in the world, a Divine fact in 
human history. But his activity will assume a beneficent direc- 
tion, and probably in the cure of disease, and the removal of the 
mental unhappiness that underlies it, as naturally and spontane- 
ously as the needle points to the pole. There is a natural antag- 
onism between the Christ-principle and disease, — a spontaneous 
resistance to the abnormal spiritual state which is the root of every 
morbid condition of the body. The human body does not contain 
room enough for both to occupy it in harmony. The Christ-princi- 
ple, as the most potent and positive force, will bind the "strong 
man " and cast him out. As soon as a man comes into possession 
of it, he is at once turned into a good Samaritan, and goes forth to 
heal the wounds and hurts of humanity by wine and oil, the sym- 
bolic representatives of good and truth. 

There are many things done today from an advanced knowl- 
edge of nature's laws, and her hidden forces, that would have been 
deemed eighteen centuries ago as the greatest of miracles. But 
as common events and every-day occurrences they have lost the 
element of wonder, and are, consequently, no longer miraculous. 
They are not surprises, as the word miracle means, but ordinary 
things, like the germination of grain, the rising and setting of the 
sun, and the still mysterious ebb and flow of the tides. The cures 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 127 

wrought by Jesus the Christ are as much in harmony with nature, 
when properly understood, as the operation of the electric tele- 
graph and the telephone, or the taking of photographs. The law 
by which they were effected is not an incommunicable Divine 
secret and impenetrable mystery, but will some clay be as well 
understood as any of the processes of nature, and better than the 
action of medicines in the cure of disease. Then will be fulfilled 
the words of the Christ : " The works that I do shall ye do also ; 
and greater works than these shall ye do, because I go to my 
Father." As spiritual knowledge increases, and Divine light 
penetrates the solid darkness of the world, the boundaries of the 
seemingly impossible will become an increasingly narrow area. 
When the hitherto mysterious relations of God and man, spirit and 
matter, and soul and body, are better understood, what are called 
miraculous cures will be the every-day occurrences in the life of 
the true physician. The supernatural will disappear from science 
and history, and miracles will cease to be miraculous. The phe- 
nomena of the electric telegraph eighteen hundred years ago 
would have been more wonderful than anything accredited to 
Jesus in the Gospel narratives. The grand secret of all his 
cures is found in an intuitive knowledge of the relation of mind 
and body, of spirit and matter, and the absolute dominion of the 
one over the other. There has always been a yearning in the 
human soul to penetrate the darkness on this subject, and to lift 
the veil from its mystery. It shows itself in the history of magic, 
which i3 almost coeval with the authentic annals of the race. But 
the fullness of time — the Divine, auspicious moment — for the 
revelation of the great secret had not come. There is in men's 
minds a deep, prophetic intimation that the day-spring from on 
high is about to visit us, to give light to them that sit in darkness 
and in the region and shadow of death, to guide our feet into the 
way of peace. (Luke i: 78, 79.) Then sickness, disease, and 
death, with a quantum of suffering that attends them, at which the 
benevolent heart stands appalled, will not be viewed as the inflic- 
tion of a relentless fate, for which there is no remedy but passive 



128 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

submission. Science with its higher knowledge of the mental 
causes of disease, and of the efficacy of unfailing spiritual reme- 
dies, will no longer stand in powerless and dumb amazement before 
it, but will become the power of God and the wisdom of God unto 
salvation. 

Of the thirty-three so-called miracles of the Christ, recorded in 
the Gospels, twenty-four were the cure of the sick. So far as 
Jesus was a representative of God, and a manifestation in the 
flesh of the Divine Being, this shows that God is more interested 
in healing the sick than in anything else. It is the favorite work 
of the Divine Love, the recreation of the Infinite Goodness, the 
pastime of the Infinite Spirit-Presence and Life. But the heal- 
ing of the sick by Jesus was no violation of the laws of nature. 
As one has said : " The miracle is thus not unnatural, nor can it 
be, since the unnatural, the contrary to order, is of itself the ungodly, 
and can in no way, therefore, be affirmed of a Divine work, such 
as those with which we have to do. The very idea of the world, 
as more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an order ; 
that which comes in then to enable it to realize this idea which it 
has lost will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the 
true miracle is a higher and purer nature, coming down out of the 
world of untroubled harmonies into this world of ours, which so 
many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing this back 
again, though it be but for one prophetic moment, into harmony 
with the higher. The healing of the sick can in no way be 
termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed 
was against the true nature of man, — that it is sickness which is 
abnormal and not health. The healing is the restoration of the 
primitive order." (Trench's Notes on the Miracles of our Lord, 
p. 20.) 

God has managed, and perpetually manages, to insert into our 
nature a tendency toward health, and against the unnatural con- 
dition which we call disease. When our flesh receives a wound, 
a strange nursing and healing process is immediately commenced 
to repair the injury. So in all diseases, organic or functional. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 129 

This mysterious healing power, the vis medicatrix natures of the 
older physiologists, sets itself to work at once to triumph over the 
morbid condition. The results of its action bear all the marks of 
the highest intelligence, and thus exclude the idea of all chance. 
According to I. H. Fiehte, these results are effected by an uncon- 
scious, or rather preconscious, action of the mind, which is the only 
living force of the body. But the only question with which we wish 
to deal at persent is, cannot tins healing process be greatly acceler- 
ated by a voluntary and conscious action of the mind, assisted, if 
need be, by some other person ? I unhesitatingly affirm, from expe- 
rience and observation, that it can. By some volitional, mental effort 
and process of thought, — call it, if you will, fancy, imagination, or 
faith, or all combined into an unnamed power, — this sanative cona- 
tus, or healing power which Grod has given to our physiological 
organism, may be greatly quickened and intensified in its action 
upon the body. Here is the secret philosophy of the cures effected by 
Jesus the Christ. Understanding the law and the mental process by 
which they were accomplished, they may be repeated upon ourselves 
or others under like conditions. In reference to one of the most 
seemingly impossible of the cures effected by Jesus, — the case of the 
leper of Capernaum, — Furness very justly remarks: "That it 
ought not to be hard to account for the cure, and to conceive how a 
mental and moral influence could have wrought to overcome the dis- 
ease, if we hold to.the philosophy of many of the wisest of men, which 
teaches that the mind, instead of being an accident of the body, is its 
creating, organizing life." {Jesus, by W. H. Furness, p. 92.) This 
is the law that is illustrated by all the so-called miracles of the 
Christ, so far as they relate to the healing of the sick ; and all the 
others, if they are not mythical, are of minor importance. There 
is a law of the action of the mind on the body that is no more 
an impenetrable mystery than the law of gravitation. It can 
be understood and acted upon in the cure of disease as well as 
any other law of nature. Here knowledge, and especially spiritual 
intelligence, is power, and, in the eyes of the multitude, the results 
of its operation in the healing power of Jesus were deemed a 



130 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

miraculous potentiality. As a law of nature expresses the uniform 
mode in which the Divine force manifests itself, a conformity to 
law is to us the only source of power. It is thus alone that we 
can make the Divine power available for the cure of disease. 
Every method of cure, in order to its success, must conform its 
therapeutic devices to the Divine operation in nature, and these 
can only accelerate and intensify the natural process of healing. 
He who best understands how to do this will be the physician 
whose cures will be the most frequent, and, to the world at large, 
the most marvelous. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

JESUS AS A SAVIOUR, OR HEALTH-GIVER, MINUS THE ENCHANT* 
MENT THAT DISTANCE LENDS TO THE VIEW. 

To save and to heal, according to the highest authority in ety- 
mology, are the same word at the root. Jesus as a Saviour was 
the Health-Giver in the fullest sense of the term. He did not 
heal the hurts of humanity slightly but fully. In his system, sal- 
vation was not the superficial thing that it came to mean in the' 
Church. It was not the mere forgiveness of the sins of men ; it 
was much more. It was not a part of man's nature, but the entire 
man that was the subject of it. The invalid was made whole — that 
is, hale — in every department of his being. In the character of a 
Saviour or Healer let us briefly look at him, subtracting from the 
view all theological and mythical additions. 

The inspired sentiment of the poet Campbell, that "distance 
lends enchantment to the view," finds frequent illustrations. 
Things distant either in time or space often seem larger and of 
more importance than every-day occurrences around us. This 
added magnitude, which distance lends to them through the imagi- 
nation, must be subtracted in forming a rational estimate of them. 
In the days of my childhood, in reading of the thirty-one king- 
doms overrun by Joshua and his Jewish followers, those petty 
tribes swelled into dominions like those of Russia, or England, or 
France. But they all existed, without crowding each other, in a 
territory not much larger than New Hampshire. When we read 

131 



132 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

of the sea of Galilee and the ships upon it, the average religious 
man or woman fancies a large body of water with vessels upon it 
but little less in capacity than the Great Eastern ; whereas the sober 
fact is the whole lake of Gennesaret, which is only eighteen miles 
in length and six miles wide, and shallow in depth, might be 
emptied into our lake Superior without perceptibly raising its 
waters; and the ships were only small boats, many of which 
might be taken on board an ordinary man-of-war without discom- 
moding the crew. So from the miracles of Jesus the Christ we 
are to eliminate the apparent magnitude which distance gives 
them, and bring them into a sober philosophical reality. Seen 
through the intervening atmosphere of eighteen centuries, they 
are viewed as a sort of mirage, and greatly magnified, and assume 
unnatural, if not impossible, proportions. Eliminating all this 
" enchantment " which distance lends them, they are brought into 
the compass of events that are today possible, if not of frequent 
occurrence. Yet they are still what they were called, " mighty 
works" (dvvu[ieig, an exhibition of spiritual power}, and they 
were, and still are, as they were sometimes denominated in the 
New Testament, " signs" (ajy^eiw), that is, "they were indications 
or tokens of the near presence and working of God. They were 
signs and pledges of something more and beyond themselves, and 
indicate the connection in which the doer of them stood with a 
higher power." ( Trench's Notes on the Miracles of our Lord, 

P . 11.) 

It is a truth of the intuitive reason, and one that is self-evident, 
that the same cause, other things being equal, will produce the 
same effects. Hence the spiritual agencies and forces employed 
by Jesus the Christ in the cure of disease will effect today the 
same results. If he who understands them and uses them with 
this end or aim does not possess them or cannot control them in 
equal intensity and power, only similar effects will be produced, 
— the same in kind, but less in degree. That his " mighty 
works," or, as the word has been inaccurately translated, his mira- 
cles, which were mostly those of healing, could never be repeated 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 133 

in subsequent ages, by his disciples or the learners in his school, 
is contrary to his express declarations. (Mark xvi : 17, 18; 
John xiv: 12.) In the first passage, the laying the hands upon 
the sick so that they should recover was to be the "sign" or 
outward manifestation of a genuine faith, and was always to follow 
its exercise in that direction. In the other passage the possibility 
and the practicability of these curative results being reproduced 
is based upon an implied promise of aid from him out of the 
heavens into which he was to ascend ; and these always touch the 
earth at the point where the believing soul stands, and are never 
removed from us by spatial distance, but are as near to us as our 
souls are to our bodies. For the spiritual world is the universal 
and everywhere present realm of mind. Our minds are already 
in it and constitute a part of it. The power to do these works was 
not to proceed from a crucified body and dead Jesus, but from an 
ascended and living Christ, whose eternal life and spiritual power 
were to be imparted to his disciples or scholars, and incorporated 
into their being. Peter declared to the lame man, who was healed 
at the gate of the temple, that it was in the name of Jesus Christ 
of Nazareth, or by a power derived from him, that he was made 
whole and able to walk. (Acts iii : 1-16.) To attempt such 
things, unless our natural powers are augmented and reinforced 
by a power from on high, is like a totally disabled man trying to 
walk without crutches, or a bird with broken wings attempting to 

As to the historical fact of the actual existence of such a person 
as Jesus eighteen centuries ago there can be no rational doubt. 
"We have the same evidence of it that we have of the existence 
of Alexander, Ctesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, or even George 
Washington, and far more than we have of the existence of Con- 
fucius, Zoroaster, or Buddha. Yet I am constrained to believe 
that the Christ-principle, the living Word, the Divine Logos, the 
reception of which in full measure made the son of Mary the 
Anointed One, or the Christ, is of far more importance than the 
mere historical personal Jesus. The Word, the light that lighteth 



134 THE PIVINE LAW OF CURB. 

every man that cometh into the world, and the unsealed fountain of 
all inspiration, was personified and incarnated in him, and this 
light is still the life of men. This Word — this illuminating and 
vivifying power — is represented by John in the Gospel that is most 
emphatically Christian, and which my friend Rev. E. H. Sears 
calls the heart of Christ, as the primal, creative energy. " AH 
things were made by it, and without it was not anything made 
that was made." (John i: 3.) Whoever will open his soul 
upward to receive it from a sympathetic conjunction with the 
Christ can do the works that he did, and have power from on high 
to heal the souls and bodies of men. This "light of life," this 
uncreated and creative Word, is seeking to diffuse itself through 
all human souls as their highest mental energy and power. It is 
striving for admission through the sensuous envelope in which we 
are enclosed, like the pressure of the atmosphere upon a vacuum. 
This Word of God is not a booh to which men are to resort for 
instruction, but is the every- where-present light of truth that came 
to the souls of men ; and it will come to us, as it has to the proph- 
ets and inspired messengers of all ages, if we will hold the soul as 
a recipient vessel open and upward to receive it. Jesus did this 
as no one before had ever done, and thence came his spiritual 
power. That which is itself the creative energy must have the 
highest and divinest sanative virtue. If we will consent, it will 
arise in us " with healing on its wings," and can, under the proper 
conditions, be transmitted to others as God's "saving health." In 
a mitigated but true sense we can become Messiahs and Saviours 
to others, — imperfect copies at least of the original Christ. Then 
will be fulfilled the words of Jesus : "As the Father has sent me 
into the world, so I send you into the world," to multiply and per- 
petuate my "mighty works" in saving (or healing) men. 

As Jesus, the son of Mary and the " son of man," became the 
Christ, or Knowing One, by his receptivity of the Logos, or the 
Word, the Divine Source of all intellectual and spiritual illumina- 
tion, so as the Christ he was an embodiment or incarnation of 
the Word, the emanative sphere of the Divine Intellect. The 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 135 

entrance of the Word gave him light. (Ps. cxix: 130.) It was 
a perpetual light unto his feet, and a lantern to his path. (Ps. 
cxix: 105.) In him the Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us, full of grace and truth. (John i: 14.) During his fleshly 
manifestation he was a living teacher to his disciples. He left 
behind him no written instruction, or formulated expression of his 
doctrines, but promised that after his graduation to a higher realm 
of life he would ever be present with his disciples in spirit, and 
continue to be their living teacher and guide. It was an idea of 
many of the early Christian Fathers that the Christ and the Word 
are identical. So the real Word of God is not an inanimate book, 
but a living and ascended Christ, who is accessible to the soul of 
the sincere believer at all times and in all places. This illum- 
inating influence of the Christ, as the Word, is referred to by 
John : " But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth 
in you, and ye need not that any man teach you : but as the same 
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no falsity, 
and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in it." (1 John ii: 
27.) In the Cabalistic symbolism of the East the anointing with 
oil signified the reception of spiritual truth, and the consequent 
power for the successful discharge of the duties of an office. 
Hence, by the reception of the Word, God anointed Jesus with 
the Holy Spirit, and with power, and he went about doing good 
and healing all that were oppressed with evil. (Acts x: 38.) 
He in turn promised the same Divine Word and Spirit to his dis- 
ciples and scholars, to qualify them to proclaim the Gospel of 
truth, and to heal all manner of sickness and disease among the 
people. (Mat. x: 1.) The promise has his present indorsement 
and is negotiable today, as will be shown in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE PARACLETE, OR CHRIST THE SPIRIT. 

Jesus foretold to his disciples that after his apparent departure 
from them by death he would manifest himself to them in the 
Spirit, and as a Spirit. The Paraclete, or Comforter, the name 
this spiritual presence and influence was to bear, was promised as 
a substitute for his personal and material presence. This higher 
form of manifestation was to be a permanent and perpetual arrange- 
ment in the kingdom of God. It was to abide with his disciples 
forever. (John xiv: 16-18.) "Lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world." (Mat. xxviii : 20.) He declared it 
expedient for them that he should go away, or be removed from 
the recognition of their external senses, in order that, when freed 
from the limitations of time and space, by his ascent in the scale 
of life to the spiritual world, he might be more intimately present 
to their inward being. His going away only expresses his removal 
from their outward vision, and this bodily absence was necessary 
as a preparation for his more perfect manifestation in the Spirit 
and as a Spirit. His material absence was preparatory to his 
second advent, or his coming again in an invisible but divinely 
real and all-pervading spiritual efficacy to perfect their inward 
life. Christ as the Spirit could act from within, and consequently 
with much greater power in all those offices in which we most need 
him. The religious world makes a great mistake when they sepa« 
rate, in their conception of him, the Holy Spirit from the Christ, 

136 



THE MVINE LAW OF CURE. 137 

and make it anything but the Christ influencing the soul. It 13 
his second and higher coming to the world, his advent to us not 
in the flesh, in which manifestation we know him no more 
(2 Cor. v : 16), but as Christ the Spirit. It is important that we 
keep in mind the distinction between Jesus and the Christ. Jesus 
was the son of Joseph and Mary. The Christ is Jesus plus the 
Divine illuminating Word, or a mere human personality with the 
immense addition of an open communication with the Divine 
Intellect and Life. In this latter character he was to reappear 
to his followers. He says: "If I go away, I will come to you;" 
and this going away, or elevation above all material and fleshly 
conditions, was necessary to his nearer and perpetual presence. 
Let it be borne in mind that his coming as the Paraclete, or the 
Comforter, was to be more than a substitute for his personal and 
material presence and external manifestation. If he could instruct 
his disciples in the truths of the kingdom of God, he can do it far 
better now. If he could heal disease, when he was in the flesh, 
by removing the unseen mental cause, he can do it now with 
greater spiritual facility. Christ as the Spirit is more to us than 
the mere son of Mary ever could have been. This is a truth we 
are in great danger of overlooking. As the Paraclete, he was to 
be the infallible guide to all truth and present duty. (John xvi : 
13.) He was to be a principle of life abiding in the soul, raising 
the intuitive faculty to the clear perception of spritual truth, sway- 
ing the desires of the soul, exalting its affections, and strengthen- 
ing all its faculties. 

According to the Johannean Gospel, the second coming of the 
Christ was to be in the character and office of the Paraclete. 
This word is one of deep significance. By the early Greek 
Fathers, as Origen, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Theophylact, and 
Cyril, the term was interpreted so as to present the Spirit of Jesus, 
which was to come to his disciples, as the Comforter or Consoler, 
which has been followed in our English translation. In the early 
Latin Church the word was taken to mean an Advocate. In the 
first Epistle of John (1 John ii : 1), the only place where the 



138 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

word occurs in the New Testament out of the Johannean Gospel, 
it is rendered Advocate, and applied to the Christ. But the Latin 
Advocatus and the English term Advocate refer to the pleading 
of causes, and do not express the meaning of the word Paraclete 
as applied to the Holy Spirit, or to the office and work of Christ 
as the Spirit. The English word Counsel, if we are to use a legal 
term, would come much nearer the meaning of the Greek, as signi- 
fying one whose function it was to advise, to direct, to support, rather 
than to plead. Campbell, following Ernesti, gives to the word 
the meaning of Doctor or Teacher, or an inward Monitor. This 
comes nearer to its true significance. Hare prefers the word Com- 
forter to express the meaning of the Greek term Paraclete, using 
it in its etymological sense, as the strengthener and supporter. 
But it means more than can be expressed by any one word in our 
language. It may include all the different significations given 
above, and no one of them alone exhausts its full force. It is one 
of those untranslatable words, with a depth of spiritual meaning 
that cannot be expressed by any single term, with which we so 
often meet in the profound utterances of the Christ. To my mind 
it is used to represent the idea of a perfect substitute for the per- 
sonal and bodily presence of Jesus with his disciples. It is Jesus 
the Spirit, and still in the character and office of the Christ, impart- 
ing to men the Logos, the living and illuminating Word, the 
interior light and life of all souls. Whatever he could do for his 
disciples or scholars during his fleshly and more material mani- 
festation, he can do for them now. The inspiration of the Para- 
clete, or spiritual teacher, is a higher source of instruction, and a 
more unerring guide than were the verbal communications of Jesus 
with his early followers, or than the written Scriptures ever can 
be. It is the spirit of truth, and addresses the soul in the 
language of ideas. The disciples made far more progress in spir- 
itual knowledge after his outward removal from them than before 
this. After the descent upon them of the Pentacostal influences, 
when they came under the tuition of the Paraclete, or the influx 
of the life of the Christ as a Spirit, they were changed into other 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 129 

men. The gross Jewish carnality of their thoughts respecting the 
kingdom of God disappeared before their awakened spiritual per- 
ceptions. Christianity, by establishing the kingdom of God in 
the souls of men, lays little stress upon the written Word, or any 
external things. The infallible guide is the Spirit. Jesus left 
behind him no written creed, no stereotyped and changeless system 
of doctrines, and no established ceremonies of worship. And he 
was reported, with the possible exception of John, by those who 
had an imperfect comprehension of the profound depth of mean- 
ing in his utterances. He bequeathed to his followers instead of 
these his spiritual presence and influence as the Paraclete. All 
was left to be unfolded by the Spirit to meet the wants of the 
souls of men in all ages. Christianity is an inward life springing 
from Jesus the Christ that was deposited in humanity, and left 
free to work itself out in its appropriate forms of external mani- 
festation. An inspiration from the Spirit of God he bequeathed 
to his followers as their perpetual inheritance. He came to con- 
nect in the consciousness of men the sundered tie between us and 
the Divine Being. All religion arises from the natural and neces- 
sary connection of man with God, the finite with the Infinite, the 
purely human with the Divine. The peculiar essence of Christi- 
anity consists in the vivid and intense consciousness of God with- 
in, which it generates in the soul. It springs from the immediate 
intuition of the Paraclete or the Spirit of Jesus. Through this 
he is still present with his followers. God is incarnated in the 
center of our being, and comes to self-limitation in all men. This 
was taught by Schelling, the Christian pantheist. The Holy 
Spirit, or an influx of life and light from God, is as necessary to 
the life and growth of the human soul as the light and heat of 
the sun are to the growth and health of plants, and the Paraclete 
is the divinely appointed medium through which it comes to us. 

The Paraclete, in the fully developed Christian system, was to 
come to men not merely as the "spirit of truth" to kindle within 
us the light of a spiritual intelligence, and as a vivifying stimulus 
to our intuitive perceptions, but he was to be present with us as 



140 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

the "light of life," and a quickener of all the vital activities of the 
soul and body. It was to be not only an inspiration of light in 
the intellect, but its influence was to affect all the springs of our 
being. Christ in coming to us the second time, and as the Spirit, 
was to be manifested not as the light-bringer only, but as the 
life-giver and healer of men's souls and bodies. He came in the 
flesh, and still comes as the Paraclete, that men might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly. (John x: 10.) 
Says John: "The Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and 
bear witness and show unto you that Eternal Life which was with 
the Father, and was manifested unto us." (1 John i: 2.) His 
life-giving power, during his fleshly manifestation, was seen in his 
healing " all manner of sickness and disease among the people." 
But his manifestation as the Paraclete was, according to his own 
words, designed to be more than a substitute for his material and 
personal presence. The relation of the genuine believer to him 
is represented by him as a vital one like the connection of the 
branch with the vine. The branch has no independent and separate 
existence, but only a perpetually-derived one. He could say to 
his disciples: "Because I live, ye shall live also, and without me 
ye can do nothing." Paul's bliss-giving faith recognized the 
ascended Christ as sustaining tins vital relation to him, so that he 
could no more die or be diseased while consciously and sympathet- 
ically united to him than a stream can dry up while connected 
with an inexhaustible fountain. He almost lost the idea of his 
individual existence, just as Jesus himself often seemed to feel 
that his personal existence as the son of man was merged in the 
Divine Being, and he spake and acted from Him. So Paul could 
say : " It is not I that live, but Christ liveth in me " (Gal. ii : 20); 
and that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we 
also appear with him in glory. 

It seems to have been the aim of Jesus the Christ, and the 
design of Christianity, that springs from him as its living root, to 
accustom men to forget the body, and to live above it, so that they 
can live forever without it, and thus attain to a state of everlast* 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 141 

ing life, in which death should be an impossibility, and disease a 
nonentity, an absolute nihility. Thus Jesus says, — and there is 
a profounder meaning in his words than the shallow faith of the 
Church recognizes, — " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that hear- 
eth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlast- 
ing life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from 
death unto life." And in another place : " He that liveth in me, 
and believeth in me, shall never die." (John v: 24; xi: 26.) 
In his representation of himself as the good shepherd he declares 
that he lays down his life for the sheep, where the Greek word 
which is rendered "lay down" means also to put into, to impart. 
He communicates his own everlasting life to his followers. 

He who has attained to this higher faith in the risen Christ is so 
taken possession of by him, so pervaded by his spiritual presence, 
that his individual being becomes altogether secondary, and "is 
hid with Christ in God." (Col. iii: 3.) If we could suppose a 
small rill to come to a confluence with the grand Mississippi, the 
Father of Waters, and retain its distinct existence, and yet ceased 
to flow onward of itself, but was borne along by a mightier cur- 
rent, it would be an expressive symbol of the union of our life 
with the Divine Life in Christ. An idea like this is at the bottom 
of that profound little work of Madame Guyon, entitled Spiritual 
Torrents. The connection of the believing soul with God in 
Christ is not the destruction of our individuality, for if that were 
lost there would be nothing left to be united to him. It is the 
conjunction of two distinct lives in a higher unity. It is not an 
annihilation of our personal existence, but an infinite addition to 
it. It is a truth that commends itself at once to our intuitive 
reason that no man has life in himself. Our being is not self- 
originated and self-supporting, but is continually communicated 
from the One Life. Our existence is perpetually imparted from 
God, and our preservation is a momentary creation, — consequently 
an inspiration of life and health can be as reasonably expected, 
and is as available to our faith, as an impartation of light to our 
intellect. This doctrine is intuitively true, and perfectly harmo- 



142 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

nizes with the teaching of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and 
the Sacred Writings of all nations. The idea of the nearness of 
God to man, and his immanence in human nature, is coming to the 
recognition of the souls of men everywhere, and in the future will 
enter more fully into the life of humanity. 



PART II. 



THE 



RELATION OF SPIRIT TO MATTER, 



AND OF THE 



SOUL TO THE BODY 1ST MAN. 



"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" 
(bUaiap Kpiaiv, according to the real nature of things). John vii: 24. 

"My sensations are in myself, not in the object, for I am myself, and not the 
object; I am conscious only of myself and of my own state, not of the state of the 
object. If there is a consciousness of the object, that consciousness is, certainly, 
neither sensation nor perception,— thus much is clear." Fichte'a Vocation of 
Man, Popular Works, p. 271. 



CHAPTER I. 

MATTER HAS NO EXISTENCE INDEPENDENT OF MIND OR SPIRIT. 

The doctrine of Bishop Berkeley, contained in his " Treatise 
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge," published in 
the year 1710, that all we know of matter is its power of making 
certain impressions upon our minds through the senses, and that 
what we call the properties of matter, as color, hardness, extension, 
form, taste, smell, etc., are ideas in the mind alone, and without 
a mind to perceive them could have no existence, has never been 
successfully combated. It has been met with ridicule, and " cox- 
combs have vanquished Berkeley with a grin," but have never 
refuted him. When Berkeley denied the existence of matter and 
an external world independent of a perceiving mind, he meant by 
matter that unknown substratum the existence of which Locke and 
the sensualist philosophers of his school had declared to be a neces- 
sary inference from our knowledge of qualities, but the nature of 
which must forever remain unknown to us. Philosophers had 
assumed the existence of a material substance, — a noumenon, as 
it was called, which underlies all phenomena, or sensible appear- 
ances, a substratum supporting all qualities, an unknown some- 
thing in which all accidents inhere, like plants in the soil. Berke- 
ley very properly and logically rejected the idea of this unknown 
substance, this "incomprehensible somewhat," as a thing not 
provable by our senses, and he replaced it by a known cause, a 
spiritual substance. The existence of this substratum in whicfc 

145 



146 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

all the properties of matter were supposed to inhere, and from 
which they arise, is confessedly unknown and unknowable, and 
hence is a fiction, a baseless hypothesis. Said Berkeley: "If by 
matter you understand that which is seen, felt, tasted, and touched, 
then I say matter exists. I am as firm a believer in its existence 
as anyone can be, and herein I agree with the vulgar. If, on the 
contrary, you understand by matter that occult substratum which 
is not felt, not tasted, and not touched, — that of which the senses do 
not and cannot inform you, — then I say I believe not in the exist- 
ence of matter, and herein I differ from the philosophers and 
agree with the vulgar P (Lewes' History of Philosophy, Vol. 2, 
p. 298.) 

Take from any material object all its sensible properties, or 
what the mind alone perceives in itself, and what have you left ? 
The thing to you has no existence, and is annihilated. There is 
nothing left that can be an object of knowledge, or of which we 
can form an idea. Matter has the root of its being in mind, and 
without this it has no existence. That which is not perceived is 
all the same as that which has no existence, and the mind can per- 
ceive nothing but ideas in itself. Thus, for example, a certain 
sensation or idea of color, taste, smell, figure, and consistence 
being observed together in the mind constitutes a distinct thing 
which we call an apple or an orange. Another combination of 
ideas we name a stone, a tree, or a house. But all that we have 
any knowledge of is in ourselves. "In all perception," says 
Fichte, " thou perceivest only thine own condition. ,, (Popular 
Works, p. 269.) 

All the properties of matter are now viewed by scientific men 
as only so many forms of force ; as, for instance, color is a modifi- 
cation of light, and light is taken to be a vibratory movement of the 
ether. This may be true, but color is certainly a sensation or an 
idea in the mind, and where there is no mind there is no color. 
Hardness or solidity is only a sensation of resistance ; and when 
we touch an object and say it is hot, we mean that we feel a sen- 
taiion of heat. If, as modern science affirms, all the properties 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 147 

of matter are forms of force, and we go one step further, as we 
inevitably must, and show that all force is spiritual, and all causa- 
tion mental, then matter itself becomes only the manifestation of 
spirit, and mind the only real substance. Berkeley affirmed 
that " there is not any other substance than spirit." (Principles 
of Human Knowledge. Sec. vii.) 

Leibnitz taught that all force is spirit. It belongs to the 
essence of the soul. He declared that the material universe is 
derived from, and owes its continued existence to, spiritual forces. 
He viewed matter as the externality of mind, the manifestation of 
force, the phenomenon of spirit. External nature, in his view, 
was an " unconscious soul." (Lewes' History of Philosophy, 
Vol. 2, pp. 274-276.) 

In the transcendental philosophy of Kant it is demonstrated 
that space and time, which are the essential conditions under 
which matter is viewed, have their origin in the mind, and are 
only modes of thought, or "subjective forms of sensation." 
According to Schelling, " Nature is spirit visible, and spirit is 
invisible nature." Oersted very truly remarks : " All matter is 
more nearly related to spirit than we generally imagine." (Soul 
in Nature, p. 4.) Swedenborg viewed the external world as the 
ultimation of the spiritual universe. The natural world, with all 
its objects of beauty and grandeur, is the outside boundary of an 
interior spiritual realm, — the point where the wave of creative 
influx proceeding from the Central Life terminates, or is staid. 
Accordingly, every object in nature corresponds or answers to 
something in the spiritual world, and to which it sustains the per- 
petual relation of an effect to a cause. Matter in all its forms is 
only spirit made visible to the sensuous range of the mind, or the 
space-creating power of the soul. All material things are the 
counterparts of spiritual entities, and together they constitute an 
undivided and indivisible whole. This doctrine was applied by 
the great spiritual philosopher to the human body, which was 
viewed by him as the form or outside boundary of the mind, the 
counterpart of the spirit, and having no independent existence of 



148 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

its own. It was the constant creation of the soul, and was an 
outward response to its internal states. 

Spirit, or mind, is the only substance, or is that, as the word sig- 
nifies, which is the underlying reality of all material things. 
Mind and matter sustain the necessary relation of substance and 
form. These are always connected in thought. Every substance 
must be manifested and conceived of as a form. A substance 
without a form would have no real existence, but would be an ens 
rationis, an ideal entity. Matter is the form of spirit^ or that 
which gives it a definite limitation in space. The mind or spirit is 
the substance or underlying reality of the body; and as every 
change in a substance necessitates a modification of its form, or 
external manifestation, so a change of mental state is followed by 
a corresponding alteration of the bodily condition, either in the 
direction of health or disease. 

Swedenborg makes a distinction between substance and matter, 
and this is of great importance in philosophy. He, like Spinoza, 
uses words with almost mathematical exactness of meaning. He 
employs the term substance in its etymological sense (from sub, 
under, and sto, to stand), as that which is the spiritual basis, the 
underlying reality of things. Substantial things, he affirms, are 
the primitives of material things, and differ from them as the 
spiritual from the natural, the prior from the posterior, or, in other 
words, as a cause from an effect. (True Christian Religion, 
79.) Aristotle introduced into his philosophy the same distinc- 
tion, or, at least, one quite similar to it. He represented every- 
thing as having in itself both substance (y^y) and form (hdog). 
The latter, as the Greek word signifies, is that which is seen. It 
is that which makes the former visible. Thus, form is the mani- 
festation, the boundary, the limitation of substance, or, in the 
language of the Scandinavian Seer, the ultimation of spirit. Mat- 
ter is spirit made visible and tangible, or the externalization of 
mind. Ideas, as was taught by Plato, are the only real things. 
When projected outward by the mind, and viewed by tho mind aa 
external to itself, and upon the plane of sense, they become mate- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 149 

rial tilings. Ideas are not mere mental conceptions, but real, 
spiritual entities. These are the realities that underlie all material 
and sensible objects. They are spiritual creations, and go forth 
from the Infinite Mind, and in their ultimate expression they are 
material forms. These are permanent so far as the material uni- 
verse represents and expresses the fixed ideas of the Infinite Soul 
and of the spiritual world, and established and unchanging truths 
in the realm of mind. It is this that gives to nature its stability. 
With regard to the relation of matter to spirit one thing is cer- 
tain, — that all we know of matter is in our own minds. All that 
is ever seen of what we call the visible world is not and cannot be 
external. Its externeity or outness is only apparent, and not real. 
This truth was demonstrated with great acuteness of reasoning by 
Berkeley and his contemporary, the Rev. Arthur Collier. What 
I see is not external. Vision is in myself, — in my mind. We 
may see things beside ourselves, or other than ourselves, but we 
certainly see them in ourselves. This distinction is well made by 
Litchtenburg in 1799. He says : "To perceive things outside 
ourselves is a contradiction; we perceive only within us; that 
which we perceive is merely a modification of ourselves, therefore 
within us. Because these modifications are independent of our- 
selves, we seek their cause in other things that are outside, and 
say there are things beyond us. We ought to say preter nos 
(besides ourselves); but for preter we substitute the preposition 
extra (without), which is something quite different, that is, we 
imagine these things in the space outside ourselves. This, evi- 
dently, is not perception, but it seems to be something firmly inter- 
woven with the nature of our perceptive powers; it is the form 
under which that conception of the preter nos is given to us, — the 
form of the sensual." (Zb'llner's Transcendental Physics, p. 36.) 
The same is true of feeling. When I touch an object, it feels cold 
or hot, smooth or rough, hard or yielding. But all these so-called 
qualities of matter are only sensations in me. Beyond those sen- 
sations it is not possible for me to know anything of it. Even 
Sir William Hamilton admits that we do not see the sun, but only 



150 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

an image of it, and that no two persons see the same sun. He 
also affirms that we perceive extension only in our own organs, 
and not in the objects we see or touch. He also admits that all 
the secondary properties of matter are only sensations in the mind. 
(MilVs Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. 
Vol. I., p. 199.) I do not mean by this to deny the reality of 
what we call the material world, but only to affirm that it has no 
separate existence, but is bound up in an eternal unity with mind ; 
and if the realm of spirit should cease to be, the material world 
would instantly perish with it and in it. 

What has been said above may throw some light upon the 
remarkable assertion of Swedenborg, that God creates the world 
through man ; by which we are to understand that what we call 
the creation is a purely gerundive matter, — Grod's perpetual act, — 
and that He holds the work to man, at every stage, so as to repre- 
sent him always at his present point, and act upon him fitly to 
his present state. In this way the world is linked to man, and 
constantly made to represent him to himself. (BushnelVs Nature 
and the Supernatural, p. 188.) This may be the meaning of the 
saying of Protagoras, that "Man is the measure of all things." 
Akenside speaks of — 

" The charm 
That searchless Nature o'er the sense 
Diffuses,— to behold in lifeless things 
The inexpressive semblance of himself, 
Of thought, and passion." 

The objects of nature represent the things of the mind, — our 
ideas and feelings. The appearance of what we call the outward 
world to us is always, to some extent, a reflection of our inward 
states. This may be seen in its seeming changes from our vary- 
ing moods of joy and sorrow. In the one case outward nature 
seems to smile and wear a cheerful aspect ; in the other every- 
thing assumes a sombre hue, and a pall of gloom is spread over 
the landscape. The music of nature and all its harmonious 
sounds are changed to dirge-like strains. Thus, God holds the 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 151 

world up to man as a mirror to reflect hia inward states, and wo 
continually, as it were, create the world in which we live, and 
mould it in harmony with our interior condition. This will be 
more fully realized in the world to come. 

It is very generally admitted that we do not directly perceive an 
external world, but only infer its existence from our sensations 
which are in our own minds. Dr. Thomas Brown, in his " Lect- 
ures on the Philosophy of the Mind," admits that the mind is con- 
scious or immediately cognizant of nothing beyond its subjective 
states ; but he assumes the existence of an external world beyond 
the sphere of consciousness on the ground of our universal belief 
in its unknown reality. Independent of this belief, there, is no 
reasoning on which the existence of matter can be vindicated ; the 
logic of the idealist he admits to be unassailable. (Sir W. 
Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, p. 62.) 
Prof. Ferrier, in his Institutes of Metaphysics, affirms that matter 
per se, and the whole material universe by itself, is absolutely 
unknowable. This is the fundamental idea of his philosophy. 
Matter in itself, or without, that is, outside of mind, cannot be 
known. We can, he says, only know ourselves as knowing it, 
which is only another form of expressing Berkeley's doctrine, that 
we only know an external world in ourselves. (Institutes of Meta- 
physics, p. 121.) 

An external world has no existence independent of mind. All 
the objects of creation are in their inmost reality, as Hegel affirms, 
the thoughts of God, or, as Jung-Stilling expresses it, essential, 
realized ideas of God, or, as it were, pronounced words of the Crea ■ 
tive Mind. These ideas, which are the inmost reality of things, 
are in the Divine Mind as His creative thoughts, and are not per- 
ceived only as our thought of them is a repetition of the Divine 
thought; or, as Malebranche has it, we see all things in God, or 
because of our union with Him. Time and space are in ourselves, 
as Kant and Swedenborg both teach. " We are so organized that 
when we think of things, they appear to us separately, that is, in 
space, and in succession, that is, in time. Time and space have 



152 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

their origin in our own souls ; out of us in the being of nature 
neither of them has any existence. Now, as every movement in the 
whole creation occurs in time and space, without both of which no 
motion can possibly take place, therefore all movements in the 
whole creation are merely forms of ideas in our souls, which do 
not take place in nature." (Jung- Stilling 's Pneumatology, p. 19.) 

All the objects of nature are phenomena or appearances, as 
Hegel, Fichte, Berkeley, Swedenborg, and all the idealists affirm. 
By this we do not mean that they are an empty show, but 
that the appearance does not stand on its own feet, and has its 
being not in itself but in something else of which it is a form of 
manifestation. God, who is the Universal Life, when he lends 
existence to the " passing stages of the show in himself," may be 
described as the goodness that creates the world. He is the all- 
pervading Being or Life, of whom the world is the phenomenon or 
manifestation. The same is true of the human body. It is the 
phenomenon of spirit, an appearance of which the soul is the un- 
derlying reality. 

With regard to the immediate consciousness of external things, 
taught by Descartes, Jacobi, Sir William Hamilton, and some 
others, Hegel truly says, " that nothing more can be meant by it 
than the consciousness of certain sensations. To have such a thing 
is the slightest of all cognitions; and the only thing worth know- 
ing about it is that such an immediate consciousness of external 
things is an error and a delusion, the sensible world being alto- 
gether void of truth : that the being of these external things is 
accidental and passes away as a show ; and they are characterized 
by having an existence which is separable from their essence and 
notion." (Hegel's Logic, pp. 119, 120.) 

On this subject J. S. Mill remarks, "Matter may be denned a 
permanent possibility of sensation. If I am asked whether I 
believe in matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this defini- 
tion of it. If he does, I believe in matter : and so do all Berke- 
leians. In any other sense than this I do not. But I affirm with 
confidence that this conception of matter includes the whole mean- 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 153 

ing attached to it by the common world, apart from philosophical, 
and sometimes theological, theories." {Examination of Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton's Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 243.) 

Says Rev. Arthur Collier, in the introduction of the Clavis 
Universalis: " That in affirming that there is no external world, I 
make no doubt or question of the existence of bodies, or whether 
the bodies which are seen exist or not. It is with me a first 
principle that whatever is seen is. To deny or doubt of this is 
arrant scepticism, and at once unqualifies a man for any part or 
office of a disputant, or philosopher, so that it will be remembered 
from this time that my inquiry is not concerning the existence 
but altogether concerning the extra-existence of certain things or 
objects, or, in other words, what I affirm and contend for is not 
that bodies do not exist, or that the external world does not exist, 
but that such and such bodies, which are supposed to exist, do 
not exist externally, or, in universal terms, that there is no such 
thing as an external world." 

The above well-guarded language, which I adopt as my own, is 
equally applicable to the human body. It does not exist inde- 
pendently of mind, but is included in the being of spirit. 

It was the doctrine of Fichte, Scheiliug, Hegel, and Cousin 
that matter and mind in their underlying reality, or substance, are 
one and the same. Matter is only a phenomenal manifestation of 
mind or spirit. That the so-called properties of matter are only 
so many affections or modifications of mind, take as an illustration 
beauty and sublimity, which we attribute to various objects. 
" Beauty is not anything that exists in objects independently of 
the mind which perceives them, and permanent therefore as the 
objects in which it is falsely supposed to exist. It is an emotion 
of the mind, varying therefore, like all our other emotions, with 
the varying tendencies of the mind in different circumstances." 

So of sublimity. " The sublimity which we feel, like the beauty 
which we feel, is an affection of our mind, not a quality of anything 
external." {Brown's Philosophy of the Mind, Yol. Ill, pp 
148, 151.) 



154 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

But the same may be said of all the so-called properties and 
qualities of matter. There is in us a tendency to reflect our 
mental states upon outward things, or, in other words, to external- 
ize them. We make things outward which are only so in appear- 
ance, and not in reality. We hold our hand near the fire, and 
say that the fire feels warm, — that there is heat in the fire. Yet 
this is not strictly true. The heat is not in the fire, but is a sen- 
sation or feeling in our mind. As we hold our hand nearer to the 
fire, this sensation becomes more and more vivid, until at length 
it becomes painful. This is only the same sensation of heat inten- 
sified. No one would think of saying that the pain was in the fire, 
yet the pain is only a higher degree of heat. The same is true 
of the sweetness of sugar, and the bitterness of wormwood. All 
the varieties of color are admitted by all philosophers to be only 
affections or modifications of the mind. It is not a quality of 
external things any more than :heat or beauty is. None of the 
properties of matter, either primary or secondary, have any exist- 
ence independent of a perceiving mind. Kant, admitting with- 
out question the previous doctrine of philosophers, that the mind 
has no immediate knowledge of any existence external to itself, 
adopted it without hesitation as a principle — that the mind is 
cognizant of nothing beyond its own modifications, and that what 
our natural consciousness mistakes for an external world is only 
an internal phenomenon, a mental representation of the unknown 
and inconceivable. After admitting this, his attempt to demon- 
strate the existence of an unknown external world is universally 
admitted to have been a signal failure. {Hamilton's Lectures on 
Metaphysics, p. 643.) Every attempt to prove the existence of 
anything in matter that does not exist in mind, or that does not 
coexist with it, or that can have an existence independent of a 
perceiving mind, must forever be a failure. Keid's attempt to 
refute Berkeley made me a convert to idealism more than two 
score years ago. In all my reading and study of mental philoso- 
phy I have never found anything that could weaken the force of 
Berkeley's reasoning. His position is logically impregnable. I 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 155 

fail to see the truth of Sir William Hamilton's theory of the dual- 
ity of consciousness, or that in every state of perception by the 
senses we are conscious of two things, the ego and the non-ego, or 
that which is myself and that which is not myself. I know not 
how it may be with others, but for myself I can affirm that in 
every act of sensation I am conscious only of the sensation itself, 
and of an idea, both of which are in myself, that is, in my mind. 
I may believe that something exists besides myself, but I am con- 
scious only of my own mental states and acts, for consciousness is 
the cognition of what transpires within my own mind. I may 
believe that there is such a place as London, or Paris, or Cal- 
cutta, but am not conscious of the existence of either one of them. 
The same is true of an external world, of which those cities are a 
part. 

All the properties of matter — and beside those properties we 
know nothing of it — are as certainly modifications or phenomena 
of mind as are memory and imagination. With regard to all the 
objects of nature, Berkeley affirms that their esse is percipi, or 
that their being consists in being perceived. He says : " Some 
truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need 
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one 
to be, viz. : that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, 
in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the 
world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being 
is to be perceived or known ; that consequently so long as they 
are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or 
that of any other created spirit, they must either have no exist- 
ence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit, — it 
being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of 
abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence 
independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which the reader 
need only reflect and try to separate in his thoughts the being of a 
sensible thing from its being perceived." (Berkeley's Works, 
Fraser's edition, Vol. I., p. 158.) 

The force of Berkeley's reasoning, to prove that all the quali- 



156 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

ties and properties that we attribute to matter are phenomena of 
mind alone, and without a mind to perceive them could have no 
existence, even Prof. Huxley, one of the best representatives of 
modern materialistic science, cannot avoid feeling and admitting. 
I cannot perhaps better close this chapter than in his words, taken 
from the Critique of Prof. Fraser's edition of Berkeley's Works, 
entitled " Metaphysics of Sensation." 

" Suppose that I accidentally prick my finger with a pin. I 
immediately become aware of a condition of my consciousness, — a 
feeling which I term pain. I have no doubt whatever that the 
feeling is in myself alone ; and if any one were to say that tho 
pain is something that inheres in the needle, as one of the quali- 
ties of the substance of the needle, we should all laugh at the 
absurdity of the phraseology. In fact, it is utterly impossible to 
conceive pain except as a state of consciousness." 

" Hence, so far as pain is concerned, it is sufficiently obvious that 
Berkeley's phraseology is strictly applicable to our power of con- 
ceiving its existence, — 'its being is to be perceived or known,' and, 
c so long as it is not actually perceived by me or does not exist in 
my mind, or that of any other created spirit, it must either have 
no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal 
Spirit.'" . 

" So much for pain. Now let us consider an ordinary sensa- 
tion. Let the point of the pin be gently rested upon the skin, and 
I become aware of a feeling or condition of consciousness quite 
different from the former, — the sensation of what I call touch. 
Nevertheless, this touch is plainly just as much in myself as the 
pain was. I cannot for a moment conceive this something which 
I call touch as existing apart from myself, or a being capable of 
the same feelings as myself. And the same reasoning applies to 
all the other simple sensations. A moment's reflection is suffi- 
cient to convince one that the smell, and the taste, and the yellow- 
ness, of which we become aware when an orange is smelt, tasted, 
and seen, are as completely states of our consciousness as is the 
pain which arises if the orange happens to be too sour. Nor is it 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 157 

less clear that every sound is a state of the consciousness of him 
who hears it. If the universe contained only blind and deaf 
beings, it is impossible for us to imagine but that darkness and 
silence should reign everywhere." 

" It is undoubtedly true, then, of all simple sensations that, as 
Berkeley says, their esse is per dpi, — their being is to be per- 
ceived or known. But that which perceives or knows is mind or 
spirit; and, therefore, that knowledge which the senses give us is, 
after all, a knowledge of spiritual phenomena." ( Critiques and 
Addresses, pp. 326, 327.) 

In another work Prof. Huxley admits that matter may properly 
be considered as a mode of thought. ( The Physics and Philoso- 
phy of the Senses, by R. S. Wyld, p. 45.) Prof. Faraday, in a 
paper published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1844, avows the 
belief in the immateriality of physical objects. But if they are 
not material, in the popular acceptation of the term, what are they 
but modifications of the mind, or phenomena of spirit ? If, on this 
admission, they have any existence, any reality at all, they must 
be ideas or sensations in a perceiving mind. 



CHAPTER II. 

VISUAL LANGUAGE, OR THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OP THE OBJECTS 
OF NATURE. 

In the first chapter of the Johannean Gospel all things are said 
to have been created by the Logos, or Word, which, in its highest 
significance, means the Divine Intellect or Thought. This preg- 
nant utterance of the friend of Jesus has a profounder import than 
is generally recognized by commentators. It implies that the 
objects of nature are the extern alization of the thoughts of God, 
the ultimation of the Divine ideas. Hence external things, as we 
call them, are the visible words of a spiritual language, — that is, 
they are the representation of ideas to the mind by visible signs. 
Spoken language represents ideas by audible and articulate sounds ; 
written language does the same by visible characters. When we 
see the word tree, it suggests to our minds a certain idea, or com- 
bination of ideas, and this is the only thing that we really per- 
ceive. But the word and the idea are very unlike each other. 
The connection is an arbitrary one, and the visible form only sug- 
gests the thought. So, when one pronounces the word house, the 
sound has no resemblance to the idea, and a person wholly unac- 
quainted with the English language would get no conception of 
the object represented. It would have to him no meaning. The 
objects of the visible world are a sort of optic language. They 
excite ideas in the mind, and these are the only direct objects of 
perception, and in this way God speaks every day and in every 

153 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 159 

place to the eyes of all men. Language, we are to bear in mind, 
is the representation of ideas by visible signs. But the objects of 
what we call the external world excite ideas in the mind, and hence 
may properly be called a Divine language. The objects of nature 
are God's mysterious manuscript, in which his thoughts are writ- 
ten, and by Swedenborg's science of correspondence the soul can 
learn to read this arcane, Divine language. Nature is a book, and 
we have as much reason to think that the Universal Mind, or He 
whom we denominate God, speaks to our eyes, as we have for 
believing that our intimate friend is speaking to our ears. This 
view is taken by David in the expressive language of one of his 
psalms. (Ps. xix : 1-4.) In the first chapter of Genesis God 
is represented as speaking into existence the objects of creation, 
where the Deus dixit, God said, as Augustine observed, signifies 
only the exercise of the Divine volition and thought. 

The power of interpreting the visual signs of the Divine lan- 
guage of creation, and translating them into their ideas, is a spirit- 
ual instinct, an intuitive perception, or an inspiration. It is partly 
acquired, or at least improved, by experience. As it was remarked 
in the previous chapter, all that we know of an external world is 
our own sensations. Hence J. S. Mill calls the outward world 
"a permanent possibility of sensation." Ideas are the only 
objects of perception and of knowledge, and these are continually 
presented to the mind by the sensible world which perpetually 
goes forth from God, and represents the thoughts of the Divine 
Mind. Our perception of these ideas, which we project into space 
and give to them an apparent externeity, is equivalent to a con- 
stant act of creation by the Divine Being. There may be a far- 
reaching and profound truth in the theory of Malebranche, that we 
see all things in God, or by virtue of the union of the human soal 
with the Infinite Mind. We do not perceive an external world ; 
what the mind sees — and the body is cognizant of nothing — is 
within itself, that is, we have perception only of ideas that are 
present to the soul. Persons havo been kaown to medical science 
who have come into the world with congenital cataract, and who 



1G0 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

in after life have been restored to sight. At first, they have not 
the least conception of the distance or externality of objects. 
Everything seems to touch the eyes, or in reality to be in the 
mind. This may not be so far from the truth. In the spiritual 
philosophy of Swedenborg it is taught that, in the other life, the 
scenery in the midst of which we live and move is a constant crea- 
tion from ourselves, and corresponds to our inward states. It is 
a projecting outward of what is really within ourselves, and which 
is made to represent it. Its outness is only apparent. Nearness 
and remoteness are only feelings of sympathy or antipathy. Loco- 
motion through space, or what appears to be such, is effected by a 
change of state, or, as it is called in the Scriptures, being carried 
away in the spirit. In that realm of life all outward things are 
the counterpart, the visible exhibition, of things in ourselves, and 
have life only so far as they are correspondences. In this world 
there is an inherent tendency, a spontaneous impulse, to express 
by some outward manifestation our internal states; there the 
expression is more complete, and we live in a world and in the 
midst of scenery created from our interior states of thought and 
feeling. 

But this law of correspondence extends through the whole uni- 
verse, and is seen here as well as in the life above. It is only 
another way of expressing the necessary relation of cause and 
effect. Every object of the material world derives its existence 
from a spiritual idea, or entity, of which it is the manifestation 
upon the plane of sense. The two are connected as an indissolu- 
ble unity, for an effect cannot exist without a cause, nor a cause 
without an effect. Spiritual things, which belong to the realm 
of causation, are the real things, and material things are their 
shadow or outward manifestation. The whole outward world is the 
existence of the spiritual world, or the realm of mind. The one is 
as the body and the other as the soul in man. I believe without 
a hesitating doubt that the whole visible universe, including our 
own corporeal organism, is only spirit manifested and made visible 
and tangible. If we could suppose the world of spiritual realities 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 161 

to be withdrawn or annihilated, the whole visible universe would 
disappear as instantaneously as you can snuff out a candle. The 
external universe is inclosed in the being of the world of mind, 
and is the permanent effect of an ever-operating spiritual cause. 
The seeming or quasi externality of a visible object is no unques- 
tionable evidence of its real externality. An amputated limb is 
not missed from the consciousness. The person who has suffered 
this mutilation feels it as much as he ever did, and it has the same 
apparent externality. He has even a sensation of pain in it. But 
is it external ? By pressing one eye a little out of its natural 
position, and then looking at a statue, — for instance, the Greek 
slave, — you will see two of them, and both seem equally external ; 
and yet it has never been claimed that only one of them is exter- 
nal. Perhaps in neither case is that which is seen external, but 
the object of perception is only an idea, and, for aught we know, 
the externality of both may be only apparent and equally unreal. 
For if the reader of this has not lived long enough to learn that 
things in their deepest reality are not always what they seem 
to be, it is to be hoped that he will live to be as old as Methusaleh, 
if it be necessary, in order to incorporate into his mode of thinking 
and feeling the lesson taught in that profound utterance of Jesus 
the Christ : " Judge not according to appearance, but judge right- 
eous judgment." (John vii : 24.) Within the compass of this 
brief sentence lies enclosed the unexpanded germ of the doctrine 
of Berkeley with regard to the external world. From that doc- 
trine, when once established, there hang many important practical 
conclusions in relation to the connection of soul and body, and the 
dominion of mind over matter. If all outward things are created 
by the Logos, then by the power of the Word and the Spirit mat* 
ter may be controlled, and a diseased body made whole. 



CHAPTER in. 

THE BODY IS INCLUDED IN THE BEING OP THE MIND, 

The proposition at the head of this chapter will seem to many 
as startling and incredible, perhaps absurd and ridiculous. I 
will try in as brief a compass as possible to explain what is 
meant by it. There is such a thing as apparent truth and real 
truth, and these are often quite different, as Swedenborg long ago 
demonstrated. It has been affirmed by philosophers, and has 
been so often reiterated by others who receive their scientific and 
religious creed second-hand, that the mind is in the body, that by 
the world at large it has come to be accepted as an unquestion- 
able truth, — a fundamental verity. The body has been called 
the clothing of the spirit, and its habitation sometimes its prison. 
Descartes located the soul in the pineal gland, others have made 
the whole brain its seat, and some of the older philosophers located 
it in the stomach, or in the region of the epigastrium. Others still 
have generously given it more room by extending it through the 
whole body. It was the opinion of Aristotle that the soul as an 
indivisible whole is in every part of the body. (Bowen's Metaphys- 
ics of Sir William Hamilton, p. 267.) This expresses a degree 
of truth, but is not the highest truth in regard to it. As there is 
not a point in the universe where the whole Deity is not present, 
so the soul is everywhere in its own world, which is the corporeal 
organism. While it is true that God is in the world that perpetu- 
ally goes forth from Him, Paul expresses a higher truth, that the 

162 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CUKE. 163 

world and all things are in God, that is, included in his Being. 
(Actsxvii: 28.) So it was the opinion of Berkeley that the 
human body, including of course the brain, exists in the mind, 
and not the mind in the body. (Berkeley's Works, Fraser's edi- 
tion, Vol. I., p. 301. Note.) The mind is more than the body; 
its action is not bounded and limited by the corporeal organism. 
It may, and often does, act independently. 

One thing is certain, — there is not true single quality, attribute, 
or property of the body of which we can form any conception that 
is not in the mind. "What we call sensation is admitted by all to 
belong to the spiritual nature or organism and not to the body, 
though the latter may be according to the appearance. The eye 
does not see, the ear does not hear, and the sensory nerves do not 
feel. This is acknowledged even by Locke. Strength is not a 
bodily condition, but a mental force, as the body is only a passive 
and unconscious instrument of the soul. As we have seen in a 
previous chapter, all the so-called properties of matter are sensa- 
tions or ideas in the mind. The same is true of the body. The 
soul, the mind, the spirit, is what constitutes myself I affirm with 
Bishop Berkeley, the English Plato, and with Swedenborg, the 
Scandinavian Seer and spiritual philosopher, that mind is the 
only substance. Without it nothing material could exist. The 
body has no independent being or life in itself. The soul is the 
real man, and the body is its existence, or outward manifestation, 
to itself and to others. We are so constituted that when the soul 
takes a view of itself the idea, or image, is projected outward so 
as to appear distinct from itself, — this state of perception becom- 
ing permanent is what constitutes the body. It is the soul view- 
ing itself as something outside of itself, analogous to the way in 
which we see the image of ourselves in a mirror. In either case 
the externality is more apparent than real. The body is the 
representation of the soul, which the latter sees of itself, as in a 
glass. It has only a quasi outwardness, which is a necessary con- 
dition of the mind's becoming visible to itself. This will be true 
of the soul forever. In the other and higher life it will create for 



164 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURB. 

itself a spiritual body which will possess an apparent externality to 
the soul, but which will be only the reflected image of itself. 

I do not deny the real existence of the body, but only that it 
has an independent being. It perpetually lives in and from the 
mind. We are so formed by the Creator that what we call matter 
must be viewed as in space ; but Kant has clearly proved that 
space and time are not real entities, but subjective states, and the 
necessary conditions under which we conceive the existence of 
things external to ourselves. ( Critic of Pure Reason, pp. 23-47.) 
The body is formed by the image-making faculty of the soul, or 
what we call in mental philosophy the imagination, acting, as we 
shall have occasion to show hereafter, unconsciously to ourselves, 
though its voluntary and conscious activity may modify the bodily 
condition. This image, or reflection of the soul, according to a 
necessary law of thought, must be viewed as external to itself, in 
the same way as the objects of fancy or imagination are seen as 
out of the mind, and having an appearance of externeity, although 
they are really in the mind. The things we see in the imagina- 
tion differ from the objects of our sensations only in the degree of 
intensity in which we perceive them. The one may have as real 
an existence as the other. " Thus, from a view of the two powers 
taken together, we may call sense (if we please) a kind of tran- 
sient imagination, and imagination, on the contrary, a kind of per- 
manent sense." (Hermes; by James Harris; London, 1736; p. 
357.) It has long been taught in mental philosophy that, as to 
the objects of the external world, we do not see the things them- 
selves, but only their images, which are supposed to be formed 
upon the retina. This image, or idea, is all the evidence we havo 
of their existence, and this, it must be confessed, is in the mind. 
The existence of anything beyond this is only an inference, a 
belief, and I simply deny the logical and necessary connection of 
the conclusion with the premises. The same reasoning applies 
with equal force to our own bodies. The body is the externaliza- 
tion of the idea, or image, which the soul forms of itself, and is 
thus the perpetual creation of the mind, just as our soul is thus 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUBE. 165 

continually formed of God. The Divine Being projects Himself 
outward in thought, and the universe is the result. We do the 
same, and the body, which has been called a microcosm, or little 
universe, is the product. Thus, the soul perpetually creates its 
body out of itself just as God creates His universe, not from noth- 
ing, but from Himself. The body is not something superadded to 
the mind, but a representation of the mind to itself, and also, 
when interpreted aright, to others. It is a word of which the 
soul is the meaniug. It is not a mere appendage of the soul, 
but is a manifestation of the soul itself under the limitations 
of time and space. This destroys the dualistic conception 
of man as a being made up of soul and body, and reduces the 
two departments of his nature to an indivisible and inseparable 
unity. He is not a living personality divisible into two distinct 
and separate halves, but they are one, and the soul is that one. 
The soul has taken, and ever will take, the body as its own crea- 
tion into a personal union with itself, — " a union the most consum- 
mate and absolute of which we know, or of which we can con- 
ceive, infinitely transcending the completeness of the most perfect 
mechanical and chemical unions, and they are as completely one to 
us as if they were one substance." This assertion of Prof. Krauth, 
in his edition of the great work of Berkeley, is true ; for the spirit 
is the one and only substance, and the body has no existence 
except in and from that. The body is the shadow, and the mind 
is that to which it belongs, and to which it is attached, and the 
two are vitally linked together. 

When one affirms that the mind is in the body, what does he 
mean ? Do his words imply the same as when he says the bird 
is in the cage ? or the man is in the house ? He surely cannot 
mean this. So, when I invert the principal terms of the proposi- 
tion, and assert that the body is in the mind, I do not mean the 
same as when I say that one material object is inclosed within 
another, as, for instance, a gem in a casket. I only affirm two 
things, — that the body does not, and cannot, limit the action of 
mind, and that the mind neither lives in it nor from it. As Sir 



166 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

Thomas Brown expresses it: "That mass of flesh that circum- 
scribes me limits not my mind." (Religio Medici, Part II., Sec. 
11.) The body is that which gives to the soul the property of 
visibility, both to ourselves and others ; but it does not manifest 
the whole of the soul. As long as the soul lives it will create for 
itself a body, or an outward expression of itself, — a something 
that represents it and corresponds to it. This will be true of it 
forever. What the world calls death, which is only transition to 
a higher degree of life, and an ascent in the scale of existence, 
does not disrobe the soul of a bodily manifestation, and leave it a 
" formless puff of empty air." This is taught by Paul in that 
remarkable passage in his second epistle to the Church at Corinth, 
where he uses both the Pythagorean and the Platonic form of 
expression for the body as the garment and the habitation of the 
soul: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle 
were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly 
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven : 
if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." (2 Cor. 
v: 1-3.) The soul could no more have an ez-istence without a 
body than God could ear-ist without a universe that He perpetually 
creates out of Himself, and which manifests Him. Paul declares 
that "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body" (1 
Cor. xv : 44), which, in connection with the context, means that 
as we have a body here in this rudimentary stage of existence fitted 
to the uses of the soul, so when we graduate to the next higher plane 
of life we shall there have a body adapted to the external activity 
and manifestation of the spirit. But in both worlds the body is 
the outgrowth of the soul, and its visible representative, and is 
bound up in an indissoluble unity with it. If destitute of a bodily 
expression, souls or spirits could never become visible to others, 
even if they could to themselves. The body, by a necessary law 
of creation, corresponds to the soul, that is, it is an effect of which 
the soul is the cause; and an effect is always included in its cause, 
and is its outward manifestation. 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 167 

It will be asked, if the body derives its existence from the soul 
and is only its external manifestation, why must we eat in order 
to live ? To this question the answer is at hand. It is not the 
object of eating our daily bread to give us life. Digestion does 
not generate the vital force, but is itself a vital action. We were 
horn alive, and consequently lived before we ever took any nutri- 
ment into the stomach. Our ante-natal existence was a dependent 
and derived mode of being through the umbilical cord. When 
this was cut, we entered upon an existence independent of the 
maternal organism. But that spiritual something that answers to 
the umbilical attachment, and forever binds us to God, the Primal 
and Central Life, has never been severed. In Him we live, and 
move, and have our being. Our existence is, and ever will be, 
inclosed within the womb of Infinite Being. We can never be so 
born, or born again, as to be independent of Him. Because He 
lives, we live also. He is the true vine, we are the branches; but 
the immortal sap of a Divine Life circulates through the minutest 
twig and leaf of our tree of life. If we look to food, or medicine, 
or anything else, for life, we are searching for it where we shall 
never find it. Life in its highest sense is conscious or uncon- 
scious union with God. 

In an age which exhibits a tendency to idolatrize the tangible 
and material, it is to be hoped that it will not be deemed mentally 
unhealthful to call the attention of men, even if only for a pass- 
ing moment, to the possible reality of something that lies beyond 
the range of the external senses, even if the reader does not see 
and feel the full force of my conclusions. If it be thought that I 
go to an extreme of idealism, let the reader take it as a spiritual 
medicine, on the principle of the antipathic method of cure, for 
our equally extreme sensualism both in religion and philosophy. 
I believe with the full force of an interior conviction that there ia 
something beside matter in the universe, even though matter be 
reduced to the bathybius, or deep-sea mud of Hackel (the vital 
stuff of which things are made), or to the protoplasm of Huxley, 
or the bioplasm of Beale. The mind is more real than the body, 



/ 



168 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

though its existence cannot be detected by the microscope. Man 
is more soul than body. The mind is the reality, and the body its 
phenomenon, or appearance. The body is the spirit formulated. 
It is a symbol addressed to sense of our inner soul-life. It is our 
fixed mode oL thought and feeling organized into structure. It is 
the interpreter of the mind, and translates its invisible states and 
acts into sight. It is like a thin, transparent, gauzy dress, worn 
upon the stage of this life, which partly conceals, but more fully 
reveals, the form or inward quality of the spirit; for what the body 
is as to strength or weakness, health or disease, will ever depend 
upon the state of the soul. If with some we call the body the 
clothing of the spirit, it is a garment that fits so closely to it that 
it cannot be distinguished from the spiritual personality it encloses, 
but exhibits its form and character. If we say with others that 
the body is the habitation of the soul, then I affirm it is a crystal 
palace that does not hide its occupant, but discloses all his move- 
ments. 

The idealists do not deny the reality of external things. They 
only deny that they have any reality independent of mind, as all 
the so-called properties of matter are modifications or sensations of 
mind. They correspond or answer to something in the mind, and 
without the mind they could not exist. When men attribute to 
objects a real existence, they do not err ; they only err when they 
suppose that those objects can or do exist independent of a 
perceiving mind. There can be no external world without a world 
of spirit in which it exists. The world of matter with all it con- 
tains is bound up in an indissoluble unity with the world of mind, 
and in fact exists in it. So it is with regard to the body. All 
the properties of our bodies are only modifications of our minds. 
They are reducible to feelings or sensations in the soul. It is a 
well-known fact that the conscious feeling of a limb remains after 
amputation. The same is true of every part of the body and the 
whole of it at death. All that constitutes the essence of our 
material organism, the feeling or sensation of a body, is not 
buried, but survives and is transferred with the soul to a spiritual 



THE DIVIAjs liAW OP CURE. 169 

realm of life. This is the spiritual body of which Paul and Swe- 
denborg speak. (1 Cor. xv: 44.) All that is most real and 
substantial and enduring in the human body the soul takes with 
it and in it when it graduates to a higher realm of being. 

This view of the human body was held by Jonathan Edwards, 
the greatest of American metaphysicians, who embraced the phi- 
losophy of Berkeley with regard to the external world. He says : 
" When I say the material universe exists only in the mind, I 
mean that it is absolutely dependent on the conception of the mind 
for its existence. The human body and the brain itself exist 
only mentally, in the same sense that other things do." (Memoirs 
of Jonathan Edwards, by Sereno E. Dwight, Appendix, Remarks 
in Mental Philosophy.) 



CHAPTER IV. 

MATTER AN UNSUBSTANTIAL APPEARANCE, AND IS CREATED AND 
GOVERNED BY THOUGHT. 

Matter offers no resistance to the movements of spirit, for Jesus 
appeared in the midst of his disciples when the doors were closed. 
It is penetrable by spirit, and the two can occupy the same space. 
We must bear in mind that phenomena, or sensible appearances, 
are quite different from the reality of things. The senses never 
give us anything but seeming truth. The sense of vision, which 
is supposed to be one of the most perfect and reliable of our senses, 
is an imperfect and illusory one, and gives us ideas that reason 
and intuition must correct. The picture from a magic lantern pro- 
jected upon a screen seems to be a solid reality, as much so as a 
granite boulder, but it is only a combination of light and shade. 
When it tells us that the image reflected from a mirror is a solid 
substance, it gives us only an apparent truth that requires to be 
rectified by some higher power of perception. When it tells us 
that a straight stick immersed in water obliquely is bent, its testi- 
mony is fallacious and must be corrected in order to arrive at the 
real truth. When it tells us as plainly as it can inform us of any- 
thing that the sun rises and sets, that the moon is about the size 
of a cart wheel, that the dome of heaven is a solid arch, our reason 
has to rectify the mistake, and introduce a counter and more relia- 
ble testimony. So when it tells us that matter is solid and com- 
posed of indivisible atoms and molecules, no two of which can 

170 



THE DIVIDE LAW OF CURE. 171 

occupy the same space, it deceives us again, and its testimony 
must be ruled out. The solidity of matter is an illusion of the 
senses. All that we know, or can know, of matter is that it is a 
manifestation or externalization of spirit in the form of force. The 
attraction of gravitation, which in its intensest form is what we 
call cohesion, gives to matter its appearance of solidity. Faraday 
admits that the common doctrine of the impenetrability of matter, 
or that no two kinds of matter can occupy the same space, is 
untenable, and contrary to some of the most obvious chemical facts. 
However this may be, one thing is certain, that matter is penetra- 
ble by spiritual substance or force. The mind permeates the 
bodily organism, and fills it with its own life, though the body 
does not contain the mind, and limit its action. 

Galilaso, in the preface of his works, expresses the opinion that 
matter is not impenetrable. Mitchel, Boscovich, and perhaps Dr. 
Priestly, entertained the same opinion. Dr. Darwin declares that 
the impossibility of two bodies existing together in the same space 
cannot be deduced from our idea of solidity, or of figure, which 
we acquire by the sensation of touch. He says: "The uninter- 
rupted passage of light through transparent bodies, of the electric 
ether through metallic and aqueous bodies, and the magnetic 
effluvia through all bodies, would seem to give some probability to 
this opinion. Hence, it appears that beings may exist without 
possessing the property of solidity as well as they can exist with- 
out possessing the properties which excite our smell or taste, and 
can thence occupy space without detruding other bodies from it." 
(Zoonomia, Sec. xiv., 2, 3.) 

The doctrine broached by Boscovich many years ago, and which 
Faraday declared he could demonstrate to be true, may come 
nearer the proper conception of matter than we are aware of, viz., 
that the old notion of ultimate and indivisible atoms is a mere fic- 
tion, and that what we call matter, in its last analysis, is resolva- 
ble into points of dynamic force. This doctrine of Boscovich 
makes an approach to the true conception of matter as being only 
an external manifestation of spirit. It brings it next to nothing, 



172 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

for in geometry a point is defined to be that which has position 
without magnitude. But force is spiritual, as mind is the only 
causal agent in the universe. Ail the properties of matter are 
only affections or feelings in ourselves, and their transference to 
something outside of our own minds, so far as their reality is con- 
cerned, is only an apparent truth. I must be pardoned in again 
affirming that all we know, or can know, of matter is in ourselves, 
our own sensations and feelings. It is only by an externalization 
of our own inward affections that we come to project them out- 
ward, and conceive of them as something outside our own being. 
Leibnitz taught that sensation was not an impression upon the 
body coming from without, and affecting the mind, but it arose 
from within. As before stated, all that we know of the properties 
of matter are affections of ourselves. When I say that an orange 
is sweet, the sweetness is a sensation in myself. It is the same 
with other so-called properties of material things, — as redness, 
hardness, roughness, smoothness. These are only affections of 
myself, my own mind, and thought, and feeling ; and, by the opera- 
tion of a law that we do not fully understand, they are transposed 
out of ourselves into space, and regarded as the qualities of things 
existing independently of ourselves. So with regard to the human 
body, all its apparent changes, conditions, and qualities are within 
the mind, and are only modes of thinking and feeling. The body, 
with all its varying states of health and disease, pleasure and pain, 
strength and weakness, is only the externalization, or ultimation, 
or projecting outward in appearance to ourselves, of our inward 
condition. I find this view clearly stated by Fichte. He says : 
" I am compelled to admit that this body, with all its organs, is 
nothing but a sensible manifestation, in a determinate portion of 
space, of myself, — the inward thinking being, — that I, the spirit- 
ual entity, and I, the bodily frame in the physical world, are one 
and the same, merely viewed from twc different sides, and con- 
ceived of by two different faculties, the first by pure thought, the 
second by external intuition. And this thinking, spiritual entity, 
this intelligence, which, by intuition [or sensation] is transformed 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 173 

into a material body, what can it be, according to these princi- 
ples, but a product of my own thought, something merely con- 
ceived of by me, because I am compelled to imagine its existence 
by virtue of a law to me wholly inconceivable ? " ( Vocation oj 
Man, Popular Works, p. 806.) 

In the system of Fichte the sphere of existence was supposed 
to be exactly synonymous with the sphere of thought, and that all 
the reality there was to the human body was in our thoughts and 
feelings, and that to live truly means to think truly. There is a 
mental force, a spiritual power, and a sanative value in our thoughts 
that are but poorly understood by the world. There are many well 
authenticated facts given in medical works illustrating the power 
of that form of thinking which we call imagination in the cause 
and cure of disease. These I am not disposed to doubt nor deny, 
but only refer them to a general law of our being, — that the con- 
dition of the body is an effect of which the state of the mind is the 
cause. Underneath and back of the disease there is a fixed and 
chronic mode or habit of thinking and feeling that must be changed, 
and when this is effected, by whatever means we employ, the 
abnormal condition is remedied at the root, and the body adjusts' 
itself to the new order of things in the spiritual organism as surely 
as an effect is connected with its producing cause. 

There is a mysterious power in our thoughts. I proved some 
years ago by a series of experiments that to direct our thoughts 
to another person affects him through any distance of space. The 
more intensely this mental influence is concentrated upon another / 
the more marked the effects. If we properly understood this spirit- 
ual power and the laws that govern it, our thoughts, directed to the 
sick and unhappy, would do more for their recovery than all the 
chemical remedies in the whole Materia Medica. When a patient 
is in a passive and consequently receptive condition, his mind is a 
carte blanche, or white paper, on which, by this wonderful spiritual 
force, you can write any impression you please, and through the 
mind inaugurate a new physiological movement, and effect a radi- 
cal change in the direction of health and harmony. But our 



174 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

thoughts are equally and perhaps more influential in changing 
our own mental and bodily condition. There is a creative power 
in them. The universe is the thought of God, and owes its origin 
and continued existence to the imagination or image-making 
faculty of the Divine Mind. " According to the Tar gum called 
after Onkelos, it was the Thought or Word of God which created 
man in his own image, in an image which was before God." 
(Humeri's Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes, and Christians, 
p. 101.) So our bodily condition is the result of our way of 
thinking. If we would change it for the better, — as from weakness 
to strength, from disease to health, from pain to ease, — let us 
imagine or fancy, or think and believe, that the desired change is 
being effected, and it will do more than all other remedial agen- 
cies to bring about the wished-for result. Thought is one of the 
most prominent of the phenomena and manifestations of life. Des- 
cartes went so far as to make the very existence of the soul to 
consist in actual thought, under which he included the desires and 
feelings, as he defined thought to be all that of which we are con- 
scious. (Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton, p. 217.) There 
is a profound truth in the celebrated proposition of Descartes, by 
which he attempted to prove to himself his own existence, as the 
starting point in his philosophy, — cogito, ergo sum, I think, 
therefore I am. I might modify the statement, and with equal truth 
say, what I am is always according to my way of thinking. My 
inward thoughts and feeling give shaping to my outward form and 
condition, so that I am what I really think I am. 

If we accept the conclusions of modern science, that matter is 
evolved from force, and go a step further, as wte must from a logical 
necessity, and make all force but an operation or energy of spirit, 
then mind and body are not two independent existences, or distinct 
entities and substances, separated by the whole, diameter of being, 
but are one substance under two forms of manifestation. If there 
is any one point on which scientists are agreed, it is that all we 
know of matter is from its properties, and these are forms of force. 
As Morell has said : " Matter, after all, may perhaps be reduced 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 175 

to force, and force to spirit as its source and spring." (Mental 
Philosophy on the Inductive Method, p. 66.) 

We have an illustration of the spiritual origin of force in the 
relation of feeling and motion in the human body. A sensation, 
that is, a feeling, generates a muscular movement, as when we 
involuntarily jerk the hand back when it comes in contact with hot 
water. This is what is called a reflex movement. The feeling 
which is confessedly in the mind is transmuted into a motion in 
the body. All the involuntary movements of the muscles and 
action of the organs are caused by something in the mind that 
may be expressed by the term sensation, of which we may or may 
not be conscious. A feeling in the mind is translated into a 
muscular action in the body, which is the material equivalent of a 
spiritual movement or emotion, as we expressively name it. Dr. 
Laycock, though he takes a too material view of human nature, 
yet affirms that " Matter is fundamentally nothing more than that 
which is the seat of motion to ends, of which mind is the source 
and cause." (Mind and Brain, Yol. II, p. 4.) 

He seems also to approve the doctrine of Anaxagoras, one of 
the most spiritually enlightened of the Greek philosophers, that 
mind is the cause or first principle of motion, — vow nsv aqxv v 
xivTjo-Ewg. (Mind and Brain, Vol. I, p. 329.) Mind has been 
defined to be that which has the power of beginning motion. 
Power, force, energy — words so much used in modern science — 
are not properties of matter, but belong only to mind or spirit. 
Force in action is motion. Wherever this is seen in the universe, 
from the trembling of a leaf in the breeze to the upheavel of a 
mountain, there is mind back of it as its cause. It is but the pul- 
sation of an ever-present Divine Life in nature, the all-pervading, 
ever-acting Welt-Geist, or World-Spirit. So the body of man is 
only " matter's passive heap." It is the soul that gives to the 
corporeal mass all its life, and sense, and motion. It is possible 
for mind, through volition and intelligent thought, to hold supreme 
and exclusive control over every part of it. The mysterious psy- 
chological energies that are slumbering in it may be aroused to 
action for the cure of all its diseases. — 



176 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

The materialistic philosopher will affirm that matter is the only 
substance, and that mind and thought are its higher properties and 
activities. I affirm from the stand-point of the idealistic philoso- 
phy that mind or spirit is the only real substance, and matter is 
its external form or manifestation, and in our physical organism 
the mind is the cause, and the condition of the body the efi'ect. 
There is a law of preestablished harmony between them, some- 
what like that taught by Leibnitz. The body is the correspond- 
ent or answering echo of the mind. God created the soul and 
its body in such a way, and so adjusted them to each other, that 
the soul represents and contains within itself all the simultaneous 
movements of the body, and nothing can take place in the latter 
that does not preexist in the former. He so made and fashioned 
the body that it must do as of itself all that the mind thinks and 
wills. The motions and conditions of the body are coincident 
with the thoughts and volitions of the soul, acting consciously 
or unconsciously, and follow them as an effect a cause. The body 
is like the hands of a clock, a simple indicator ; ihe thoughts and 
feelings are the internal and invisible machinery and force that 
give movement to the hands. 

There is a practical importance attached to these principles that 
takes them out of the class of mere idle speculations. The sen- 
sualistic and materialistic philosophy, or what Hegel expressively 
characterizes as the "dirt philosophy," has been applied to medi- 
cine. I only wish to show that idealism is capable of furnishing 
a more efficient means of the cure of disease. Its principles were 
employed by Jesus the Christ, and put to a practical and benefi- 
cent use. In concluding the discussion of the subject in this 
chapter, I can do no better than to borrow Ins language and 
feebly echo his words : " If ye know these things, happy are ye if 
ye do them." (Johnxiii: 17.) 

If the reader, unaccustomed to the discussions of speculative 
philosophy, does not at first see the full force of the principles 
unfolded in this and the three preceding chapters of the volume, 
he would do well to carefully read and study them again. lie 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 1 1 j 

may find in them a mine of golden, practical truth relating to 
health and happiness that had better not be abandoned without 
sinking the shaft deeper. A mere surface working may not put 
him in possession of the full extent of their treasure. If he fully 
masters the principles they contain, and mentally appropriates 
them as his own, he has won the key that unlocks the spiritual 
mystery of health and disease, and has found the reason why he is 
in the one or the other of those states. He may find in those 
principles, when clearly apprehended, something to which the 
language of Paul is not wholly inapplicable : " Howbeit, we speak 
wisdom among them that are perfect [or fully instructed], yet 
not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that 
come to naught : but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, 
even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world 
unto our glorification." (1 Cor. ii: 6, 7.) If he does not find 
in them what answers to this, there is surely a spiritual value in 
them that will well reward his search. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE UNCONSCIOUS REGION OF MENTAL ACTION. 

Few men are ever brought to feel the full worth of their own 
minds, and physicians practically, if not theoretically, undervalue 
the importance of the mental aspect of disease. The mind is the 
only principle of motion in the body, and its only life. It is our 
inward being. All that a man really is belongs to the mental 
organism. It is the theatre of the Divine energy, the home of im- 
mortal thought, the spring of the aspiration of the infinite. It is 
the real location of hell and disease, and of heaven and health. 
"All essential interests center in the soul ; all that do not center 
there are circumstantial, transitory, and evanescent : they belong 
to things that perish." (Dewey's Discourses on the Mature of 
Religion, p. 9.) 

The introduction into mental philosophy of the doctrine of the 
unconscious, or, as it is usually called, preconscious, mental action 
is a most important advance in the science of the mind. The 
notion which has usually been entertained by psychologists is 
that the acts of the mind are precisely co-extensive with the con- 
sciousness, and that whatever is done unconsciously, though appar- 
ently intelligently, yet springs from some objective source, and 
not from the mind itself. This doctrine, that the regions of intel- 
ligence and of consciousness are coextensive, has of late years been 
abandoned and come into deserved discredit. Sir William Hamil- 
ton many years ago reproduced that most fruitful idea of Leibnitz, 

178 



^^^_ 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 179 

the doctrine of unconscious thought, and pointed out the fact that 
there is always going forward more or less energetically in the soul 
a process of latent thinking. He adopts the doctrine, so prevalent 
among German psychologists, " that the mind exerts energies and 
is the subject of modifications of neither of which it is conscious, 
and distinguishes three degrees of mental latency. (Bowen's 
Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton, pp. 235-253.) Dr. Car- 
penter, taking a more material view, designated the same phe- 
nomena under the term unconscious cerebration. Dr. Laycock 
has brought them under the general category of the reflex action 
of the cerebro-spinal nerves. But this reflex action takes place 
with undeviating certainty, and with unerring intelligence. When 
a sensation generates a muscular contraction, and expends itself 
in a given movement, it is still the mind that is the occult cause, 
for the reason that sensation is not a bodily affection, but a mental 
phenomenon. The doctrine of the unconscious, or, as it is more 
properly called, preconscious, mental action has been fully devel- 
oped in the German systems of psychology, particularly those of 
Carus, and the followers of Herbart, and especially by Immanuel 
Hermann Fichte in his Anthropology, and his smaller work enti- 
tled Philosophical Confessions. So that the idea of the precon- 
scious life of the soul, and of an intelligent mental action beyond 
the range of the external consciousness, may be considered as fully 
established in philosophy, and is one that will be fruitful in 
results. 

This unconscious mental action, or latent thought and intelli- 
gence, is a doctrine of great importance in physiology and mental 
science. We affirm that the soul has an a priori existence, — that 
it precedes the bodily organism, and forms the body according to 
its nature and for its use in the external world. What is the nat- 
ure of this preexistence we do not attempt to decide. It may lie 
beyond the limits of the human understanding for the present if it 
is not to be classed among things unknowable. If we affirm with 
Swedenborg that life is uncreated and uncreatable, then our indi- 
vidual life must perpetually spring from the Divine Being, and 



180 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

though never absolutely disconnected from its Source, yet we come 
to a distinct individuality in our conception. In this God comes 
to self-limitation, and the soul enters into time and space, and thus 
becomes an individual. If it is once admitted that the soul- 
principle has an existence prior to that of the body, then it follows 
that it may exist after the dissolution of the body. The fact of its 
preexistence thus becomes the strongest evidence of its immor- 
tality. The soul is the architect of the body, and forms it by an 
unerring intelligence, by a process of unconscious thinking. " The 
whole of the preconscious state of the soul is essentially and 
specially a process of thinking, without, however, its thought as yet 
touching the threshold of consciousness. In this simple idea there 
lies nothing less than a new future for psychology, as also for the 
question respecting the relation of the soul and body. My phi- 
losophy has chiefly aimed at giving a concrete and experimental 
development to this same idea. When, therefore, in the plastic 
and physical processes it recognizes an intelligence which develops 
organic forms in space, and which stands in manifest analogy with 
the art-instincts of animals, and the creative aesthetic faculty in 
man, we cannot but think that we are only giving back again, 
truly and pointedly, the actual characteristics which experience 
presents us." (Immanuel Hermann Fichte's Philosophical Con- 
fessions, translated by Morrell, p. 16.) 

The doctrine of Fichte is that the body is formed, and after- 
wards all its physiological processes carried on, by an unconscious 
mental action, — an instinctive and intelligent thinking. He 
expressly affirms that "no organic activity is possible without the 
co-operation of thought, which thought can unquestionably exist 
only in the soul: inasmuch, however, as it precedes sensation, 
the principle by which consciousness is awakened, it must neces- 
sarily remain unconscious. The acts of the morphological and phys- 
ical impulses are not conceivable without the constant operation 
of this same instinctive power and unconscious thinking." {Phi' 
losophical Confessions, p. 19.) 

All movements of the bodily organism, all changes in our phys« 



^^~^_ 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 181 

ical condition, are manifestations of mind. Mind is the only causal 
agent, the only active principle, in the universe, and especially in 
the body. Morrell, in his valuable work on Mental Philosophy 
on the Inductive Method, has clearly shown that the so-called vital 
force, nerve-force, and mind-force, are correlated, or mutually 
influence each other, and are interchangeable, the one into the 
other. This conclusively proves that they are one at their root, 
and are probably only different forms of mental force. We can 
adopt the expressive language of Schelling, "that all physical 
motion, activity, and life-effort are only an unconscious thinking" 
or in the clearer, inspired declaration of Fortlage, " that the exter- 
nal functions of the nervous system are only mind becoming visi- 
ble." On this subject I. H. Fichte has said: "The structure of 
the nervous system presents us with a perfect reflex of psychical 
relations; and that consequently there must be various mental 
processes corresponding with the different functions which we find 
to exist in connection with nervous activity." 

There are two widely different modes of viewing the relation of 
the cerebro-nervous system to the mind. The one, the material- 
istic view, teaches that mental action is the result of cerebral 
activity. This theory is adopted more or less fully by Carpenter, 
Laycock, Maudsley, and Lewes. This materialistic view attained 
its culmination in Moleschott, who affirms that thought is a secre- 
tion of the brain, as the bile is that of the liver. The other, the 
spiritualistic view, is that the mind has priority of existence, and 
by its plastic power forms the body and the nervous system as an 
instrument adapted to its own use ; that it can act independently 
of the brain and of all organic conditions ; and can, and does in 
fact, survive the dissolution of the body. After a patient study of 
the nature and Jaws of the human mind, and of its relation to the 
body, for more than forty years, I am compelled to adopt the lat- 
ter hypothesis as explaining more clearly all the mental phe- 
nomena. The first theory would greatly shake, if not overturn 
from their foundation, our comforting assurance and blissful hope 
of immortality. The religious instinct and consciousness intui- 



182 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

tively and spontaneously grasp the latter theory as the only one in 
harmony with its nature. It is the property of a genuine relig- 
ious life in the soul that it spontaneously accepts all truth that is 
fitted to afford it the proper nutriment, and rejects with an invol- 
untary repulsion whatever is not thus adapted to its nature. This 
it does by a Divine instinct, acting independently of the logical 
reason. The mind is not the result of organization, and, conse- 
quently, dependent upon the body for its existence, but is itself 
the organizing principle. 

This unconscious mental action in our bodily organism may be 
the result of the connection of the individual soul with the Uni- 
versal Mind, or the general sphere of life and intelligence in the 
universe, or something like that which Swedenborg denominates 
the maximus homo, or grand man. We are parts of this stupen- 
dous whole. x\ll individual thought and knowledge spring from 
an Intellect that is common to all, and in which our power of 
knowing has the ground of its existence. In other words, as there 
is but One Life in the universe, and all the various forms of exist- 
ence are but manifestations of it, the same is true of thought and 
knowledge. The theory of a common intellect was earnestly main- 
tained by the Arabian philosopher Averroes, also by Alexander, 
Themistius, Cagctanus, and Zabarella. The vision in the Deity 
of Malebranche is only a modification of it. 

Preconscious mental activity in the body is an unconscious or 
latent thinking, as Leibnitz denominated it. In the philosophy 
of Fichte life and thought are one and the same. To think is to 
live, or, more properly, to exist. He says: "It is obvious that 
the phrases thought and life, thoughtlessness and death, mean pre- 
cisely one and the same thing. Thought is the element of life, and, 
consequently, the absence of thought must be the source of death." 
{The Way towards the Blessed Life, Popular Works, p. 419.) 

The power to think in all men is derived by influx from the 
Lord. {Swedenborg 's Arcana Gelestia, 2004; 2 Cor. iii: 5.) 
Hence, as Fichte affirms, thought is something of the Divine Life 
in man. "Pure thought is itself the Divine Existence {Daseyn)- t 



-^ - -- ■ - ■ - 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 183 

arid, on the other hand, the Divine Existence is nothing else than 
pnre thought." {Popular Works, p. 406.) It is this that gives 
to thought a spiritual potency and creative agency, and invests it 
with such influence over our own condition and that of others, a 
subject we shall more fully discuss in what follows. 

Our individual vitality is never disconnected from the Universal 
Life. " The knowledge of the lowest expression of life constitutes 
physics; that of the organic, physiology; that of the highest, or 
spiritual, psychology. The latter may he defined as the science 
of the Life of God in man's soul, physiology as that of the Life 
of God in his body. And as that Life is essentially One, psy- 
chology and physiology, in their high philosophical idea, are con- 
nected as soul and body, and each is an exponent of the other." 
{Life: Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena, by Leo H. Grin- 
don, p. 208.) 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MIND THE PLASTIC OR FORMATIVE PRINCIPLE OP THE BODY. 

There are two things in regard to the relation of mind and body 
that are self-evident to the intuitive reason. First, that the mind 
is the only life of the body, — that there is no indefinable and 
mysterious something in our bodily organism distinct and separate 
from the soul which is the cause of all vital action. Life is a force, 
a spiritual principle of motion. Secondly, every movement of the 
body, physiological, or muscular, or functional, and every conceiv- 
able bodily state as to health or disease, strength or weakness, are 
effects of which some action of mind, conscious or unconscious, is 
the efficient and only cause. As Immanuel Hermann Fichte has 
said: " An individual soul must be at the basis of these physical 
facts for this reason, that all the processes of life are at the same 
time instinctive actions, — that is, an unconscious kind of thought, 
which it would be absurd to locate anywhere but in the soul itself." 
(Philosophical Confessions, p. 32.) 

One thing we know, — that certain changes of the body always 
follow certain determinate mental alterations. The soul is the 
plastic principle, that is, it gives arrangement and form to the mat- 
ter of which the body is composed. It builds up the organism and 
forms the body so as to adapt it to the wants and uses of its own 
nature. In this constructive effort, this geometric activity, it acts 
unconsciously to us, but with the highest intelligence originally 
impressed upon it, something like the artistic effort of the bee in 

184 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 185 

forming its cell in the most exact mathematical proportions, so as 
to contain the largest quantity in the smallest compass. The mind 
is thus the organizing principle. It has priority of existence ; it 
precedes all bodily organization, and accompanies it as a cause in 
the process of all its changes. It alters the condition of the body 
to harmonize it with its own states. It works silently, instinctively, 
and with an unconscious but unerring intelligence, and by an 
invariable law, to effect this result. For it is a law of God that 
spirit should control and govern matter, and the body outwardly 
express the mind. 

The whole bodily structure is changed in a brief period. It is 
an old opinion, formerly current in physiology, that the body is 
renewed once in seven years, so that no particle of matter now 
enters into the different tissues that was there seven years ago. 
But this change takes place much more rapidly, and in a far 
shorter period, than was formerly supposed to be requisite. It is 
now thought to be accomplished in one year. It is not unreason- 
able to suppose that this renewal of the body is effected in one 
month, or, at the farthest, once in three months. The amount of 
waste, worn out material which passes off through the various 
excreting channels is, in a very limited time, equal to the weight 
of the whole body. But all this renewal and disintegration of 
cells and tissues is effected by the plastic influence of the mind. 
The soul is in this case the intelligent but unconscious agent in the 
change, exeitising a sort of providence over the world of its crea- 
tion. All these morphological changes, and organic activities, are 
effected by the mind through an intelligent instinct, but acting 
beyond the range of our ordinary sense-consciousness. If the 
mind and its spiritual forces and influences are the plastic or forma- 
tive principle of the body, then it follows that to change our 
mental states must of necessity modify our bodily condition. This 
is demonstrably true as a fact of experience. If, then, we make 
to ourselves a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. xviii: 31), or 
change our affection al and intellectual states, the unconscious 
instinctive action of the changed and renewed mind will form to 
itself a body in harmony with itself. 



186 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

Fichte supposes that the mind, as the plastic or organizing prin- 
ciple, effects these changes in the body, in renewing and building 
up the physical structure, by a power which he calls fancy. By 
this he does not mean what is usually called imagination, but 
intelligence in its instinctive and spontaneous operation. But this 
creative power sometimes rises from the preconscious range of 
mental action and exhibits itself in the highest efforts of artistic 
genius, which are only the outward expression, in a permanent 
form, of internal and preexisting ideas or mental creations. But 
if this mental power effects such changes in the body, when acting 
as an unconscious and intelligent instinct, why may it not be pos- 
sible for us to direct it to the changing of our bodily organism in 
disease by a conscious volitional effort? Is not imagination a 
mode of force, that is, a spiritually creative power ? and if so, 
ought it not to be taken into account in all our remedial devices ? 
If a condemned criminal, from the trickling of warm water over the 
arm, and supposing, or imagining, or fancying, it to be blood from 
a divided artery, actually died, without the loss of a drop of blood, 
why may it not act with the same efficiency in prolonging life, and 
in effecting those organic and functional changes that constitute the 
cure of what we call bodily disease ? Imagination, or fancy, may 
create disease, as physiologists admit ; and why may it not be intel- 
ligently employed to cure it ? There have been collected and pre- 
served in the science of medicine many well-authenticated facts 
showing the manifold and positive effects of the fancy upon the 
bodily organism, so that there is no room to call in question its 
vast formative power and influence in modifying our physical con- 
dition both in the direction of disease and health. What no one 
doubts we need not waste time in formally proving by an array of 
cases. This is as well established as any principle in what goes 
under the name of medical science. The morbific effects of the 
imagination upon the bodily condition are as fully proved as the 
action of arsenic or prussic acid ; but it seems to me self-evident 
that such a power can be made to produce the highest therapeutic 
results just as well. It is manifest that we have here an almost 



MMdkUL 



TIIE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 187 

unused and undeveloped principle of great practical value in the 
cure of disease. All the great discoveries of modern times, as the 
expansive power of steam, the electric telegraph, and the telephone, 
have left in the public mind a suspicion that there are yet many 
latent and unused powers of nature that await discovery, and that 
may be turned to a useful employment. It is possible that in 
what we have said in this chapter there may be a principle of 
great practical value in its application to the cure of diseases of 
both mind and body. It is possible that we have made some 
approach towards the discovery of the natural, and consequently 
the Divine, method of cure. Let anyone intelligently bring this 
creative and plastic power of the mind to the cure of his malady, 
and he will find it a most potential spiritual remedy. Let him, 
by a conscious volitional effort, employ this artistic instinct, this 
plastic influence of the mind, upon a diseased organ, and fancy, or 
intelligently imagine, that it is becoming changed for the better, 
and that within a given time it will be well, and he will be aston- 
ished at the therapeutic result. The more fully he can make himself 
helieve that the necessary change is being effected, or will be accom- 
plished in an hour, a day, or a week, the more marked will be the 
result; for faith is the most intense form of voluntary mental 
action. Why should we not be able to believe this ? For it is 
only the same power at work that, in the preconscious region of 
mental activity, carries on all the organic and physiological move- 
ments in building up the body from the cradle to the grave, only 
in the supposed case it is combined with, and aided by, a volun- 
tary and conscious mental effort. This is calling to our aid, in a 
time of need, the only power in nature that can change the bodily 
tissues, and excite the various organs to their proper functional 
movements. The soul possesses a most marvelous plastic power, 
and this formative element in the body can be made to accomplish 
far more than could be effected by any general physical or chem 
ical laws. If, as an unconscious but intelligent instinct and impulse, 
it presides over all the involuntary processes of life, may not its 
action be intensified and accelerated by a voluntary effort of thought 



188 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

working in harmony with it and in the same direction ? The 
science of medicine will never be able successfully to combat dis- 
ease until it takes as its foundation principle the words of Jesus 
the Christ : " It is the spirit that maketh alive ; the flesh profiteth 
nothing." (John vi : 63.) 

The individual mind as an image of God, and standing at the 
summit of creation, is God's vicegerent, and, by virtue of a power 
perpetually derived from Him, is, in a secondary sense, a creator \ 
or, if that be deemed too strong an expression, it is a modifier of the 
condition of its own body, the world of its formation. It can gen- 
erate a new status of the corporeal organism where its reign is 
supreme. If, when we are sad, we can make our face to smile ; 
or, when inwardly disturbed, can cause the body to wear the out- 
ward appearance of tranquility; or, when in danger, can check 
the too rapid pulsations of the heart, and be self-possessed and self- 
poised; or, if under an otherwise painful surgical operation, as has 
often been done, the brave soul can triumph over pain so as to 
lessen its intensity, if not to become wholly insensible to it, — then, 
by an intelligent use of this divinely ordained dominion of the 
mind over the body, a diseased organ can be controlled, and its 
morbid condition changed. If we were properly instructed in the 
use of the power inherent in the very nature of the mind, in nearly 
all cases of disease, especially in their incipient stage, the services 
of a physician would become unnecessary, the common practice of 
running to a physician in every ailment would be far less frequent, 
and the sale and use of drugs would be largely diminished. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FAITH MAKES US WHOLE; OR, THE CHRISTIAN METHOD OF CURE. 

The Christian method of cure, or that practiced by Jesus, was 
through faith. The expressions, so often occurring in the Gospels, 
" Thy faith hath saved thee," " Be it unto thee according to thy 
faith," and "Thy faith hath made thee whole," express the funda- 
mental idea in the system of healing disease by Jesus and his dis- 
ciples. It was the cure of the body through the influence of the 
plastic and sovereign mind upon it. In an act of faith the mind 
rises out of the preconscious range of its action, and from an intel- 
ligent impulse it becomes a conscious, voluntary effort, but loses 
none of its creative efficiency, for faith combines into a concen- 
trated form, and into a unity, all those mental states — as thought, 
imagination, belief, and feeling — which influence the condition 
of the physical organism. 

There is an interesting fact showing the power of the mind over 
the most inveterate diseases, first mentioned by F. V. Mye in his 
" De Morbis et Symptomatibus," and which has been often quoted 
as being well authenticated. We simply give it as representing 
hundreds of analogous cases that might be given. At the siege of 
Buda, in 1625, when the garrison was on the point of surrender- 
ing, in consequence of the prevalence of scurvy in an aggravated 
form, the Prince of Orange caused to be introduced a few bottles 
of sham medicine, as a sovereign remedy and infallible specific for 
the disease. This given in drops as such produced the most aston- 

189 



190 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

ishing effects. Such as had not moved their limbs for months 
before were seen walking in the streets sound, straight, and whole ; 
and many who declared that they had been rendered worse by all 
former remedies recovered in a few days. ( Gorton's Principles 
of Mental Hygiene, p. 166; Combe's Principles of Physiology, 
p. 272.) 

In the explanation of this interesting fact the inquiry arises, 
what was the principle or medium of cure in this case ? Every 
one will answer at once that it was the influence of the mind on 
the body. It was certainly not the effect of medicine, for there 
was no medicinal value or virtue in what was given. But what 
particular mental state, or what form of mental action, was it that 
possessed such therapeutic efficiency ? It would commonly be 
attributed to what is called imagination. I can discover here but 
little that answers to the idea expressed commonly by that term. 
It was faith that made them whole. It was their confidence in the 
remedial virtue of the prescription that effected the astonishing 
results; and this was no miracle, but the expression of a general 
law in regard to the action of mental forces upon the bodily organ- 
ism. But would it not be better, rather than to resort to the 
device of sham medicines, to instruct the patient in the use of this 
spiritual principle of cure, and educate him to make an intelli- 
gent exercise of faith and imagination for the cure of his mental 
and bodily diseases, and to teach him how to believe unto salva- 
tion? He should be informed how to exercise a saving or heal- 
ing faith in his own God, — the Divinity that dwells within him. 
It becomes then an intelligent method of cure, and far more relia- 
ble than the administration of drugs in allopathic or homeopathic 
doses. A genuine act of faith in God is a movement of the whole 
being towards Him, and brings the soul into a vital contact and 
vivifying conjunction with the Central Life. 

In what has been said in the preceding chapters, the influence 
of the mind on the body has been shown; but faith is the most 
intense form of mental action. When the mind rises from the pre- 
conscious to the conscious range of action, its activity separates 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 191 

itself into two distinct phases, the intellectual and the emotional ; 
but at the summit of our being, in a genuine act of faith, they 
unite in one intense focus. "Faith," says Morell, "we regard 
as the highest intellectual sensibility. It is not possible to say 
whether it resembles most an intellectual or an emotional state of 
consciousness ; the two seem to be perfectly blended in that pure 
spiritual elevation where our intellectual gaze upon truth is not 
separable from the love and ecstasy we feel in the contemplation of 
it. * He that loveth not,' says the apostle John, ' knoweth not God,' 
his consciousness. has not reached that high elevation where knowl- 
edge and love are inseparable, and in the light of which alone we 
can know God aright." 

"Faith, then, when perfected, is the state of consciousness 
which links our present to our future life. The denizens of 
heaven are termed indifferently Cherubim and Seraphim, spirits 
that are replete with knowledge or burn with love; and, as we 
have just seen, it is the cherubic and the seraphic life united 
which expresses the perfect state of man's consciousness on earth, — 
a state in which we have equally a perception and a love of the 
beautiful, the good, and the eternally true." (Philosophy of 
Religion, pp. 24, 25.) 

When I recommend faith as an efficient remedy for the cure of 
disease, or an intelligent exercise of belief by a volitional effort, 
combined with an act of the fancy or imagination, I shall be met 
with the question, Can anyone believe without evidence? To 
this I answer that belief or faith is a form of knowing. It takes 
the place of knowledge. It is a mode of cognition that acts 
beyond the limited circle of perception by the senses. In its high- 
est form it is an intuition of the love, an inward seeing, a clear 
perception of truth, without any objective or external evidence. 
Hence, in the Hebrew language we have the same word (amuna) 
to express the idea of faith and that of truth. Much that goes 
under the name of knowledge, when closely analyzed, is found to 
be nothing but a belief 'in varying degrees of certitude. 

On the subject of the nature and essence of faith and its rela- 



192 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

tion to knowledge, Coleridge very truly says that " it consists in a 
synthesis (or uniting together) of the reason and the individual 
will. By virtue of the latter, therefore, it must be an energy ; 
and, inasmuch as it relates to the whole man, it must be exerted in 
each and all his constituents or incidents, faculties, and tendencies; 
it must be a total, not a partial, a continuous, not a desultory or 
occasional, energy. And, by virtue of the former (that is, reason), 
faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of truth." 

Faith and knowledge cannot be separated. On this subject 
Cousin remarks that "to believe is, in a certain degree, to compre- 
hend. Faith, whatever be its form, whatever be its object, whether 
vulgar or sublime, — faith cannot but be the consent of reason to 
what reason comprehends as true. This is the foundation of all 
faith. Take away the possibility of knowing, and there remains 
nothing to believe, for the root of faith is removed." (Introduc- 
tion to the History of Philosophy, p. 133.) In all faith there is 
knowledge, and in all knowing there is much that is only believ- 
ing. Subtract from the sum total of all that we call knowledge 
what is only an undoubting belief, and what is left would be capa- 
ole of being expressed in a small compass. Faith, or belief, has 
been greatly undervalued by scientific men. I only aim, in the 
brief limits of this chapter, to restore it to its proper place in relig- 
ion, in philosophy, and in medicine, or the science and art of heal- 
ing. But this was done in the philosophical system of Jacobi, a 
condensed and comprehensive view of whose doctrine will be given 
in what follows. 

There is a higher source of knowledge than that which we 
derive from the senses or from reason. Jacobi affirmed that all 
knowledge, communicated through the medium of the understand- 
ing, by which he meant the logical faculty, must be of a contin- 
gent character, or depend upon the truth of things that precede it, 
and consequently can never be considered as absolute knowledge. 
To demonstrate any truth by the logical method, we must infer it 
from another that lies beyond it; this again from another still 
more remote, and so on to an endless extent. The logical method, 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 193 

or the mere reason, can never free itself from these trammels, 
and can never reach a position where truth is seen in its own 
light by a direct intuition. > Faith, which in its highest form is an 
inward seeing, is the divinely-appointed method of attaining to 
real knowledge. ^ Our knowledge of an external world is only a 
belief. We do not directly and immediately perceive it, but are 
cognizant only of our sensations and ideas that are really in our 
own minds. From these we infer the existence of external things. 
But all outward things, including our own bodies, are only an 
inference, a belief. The existence of the body, and all of its con- 
ditions of health and disease, are only a belief, as we know noth- 
ing of it except in our minds. It is in the enclosure of our inner 
being. A change of our belief in regard to it, if it be real, is all 
the same as an alteration of the bodily state. 

Jacobi taught as the central idea of his philosophy " that all 
human knowledge of every description must rest upon faith or 
intuition. As it regards sensible things, the understanding finds 
the impressions from which all our knowledge of the external 
world flows ready formed. The process of sensation itself is a 
mystery; we know nothing of it till itself is passed and the feel- 
ing it produces is present. Sensation is never knowledge, but 
only feeling. Our knowledge of matter must rest upon faith, or 
intuition. There is, however, another and higher species of faith 
than this. Just as sensation gives (or is supposed to give) us an 
immediate knowledge of the world, so there is an inward sense — 
rational intuition or a spiritual faculty of perception — by which 
we have a direct and immediate revelation of supersensual things. 
We gaze upon them with the inward eye, and have just as firm a 
conviction of their reality as we have of those material objects 
upon which we look with the bodily eye. It is by this two-fold 
faith, or revelation, that man has access to the whole material of 
truth, — material which his understanding afterwards moulds into 
various shapes, and employs on the one hand for the purposes of 
this life, and on the other for the preparation for the life to come. 
Leave out, however, this direct inlet to our knowledge, and all 



194 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

demonstration, all definition, in snort, all philosophy, are but a 
sport with words, a superstructure sometimes complete enough in 
itself, but baseless as the most airy visions of the imagination." 
(MorelVs History of Speculative Philosophy, pp. 598, 600.) 

Belief and imagination, which are combined in faith, are a source 
of knowledge far more reliable than sensation or an objective 
demonstration, and, in fact, the former usually precedes the latter. 
Faith is an inward seeing, and nearly all the great discoveries in 
science and the arts are made by the intuitive faculty, and are a 
revelation to faith, which explores the ground, and external 
demonstration follows after. They are first seen by the mind, and 
subsequently confirmed by experiment and mathematical calcula- 
tion. But the discovery is not the result of these subsequent 
investigations, but almost always precedes them. Take as familiar 
illustrations the discovery of the identity of electricity and light- 
ning by Franklin, of a Western Continent by Columbus, the law 
of gravitation by Newton ; also the invention of the air balloon, 
the voltaic battery, and the discovery of the metalic bases of the 
earths. The idea of all these first existed in the mind of the dis- 
coverers. As to the last named, it had long been prophesied by 
Lavoisier. I may also add that all these discoveries have again 
given a spur to intuitive anticipations which have afterwards been 
justified by experience. So that here we find an application of the 
profound remark of Schiller, that what the spirit promises, nature 
performs. {Oersted's Soul in Nature, p. 12.) Every philoso- 
pher first imagines his theory, and then goes to work to collect 
facts to illustrate and confirm it. But it first comes to the mind 
as an intuitive perception, a vision of faith, which does not wait 
for the slow and laborious induction of facts. It has its origin in 
an inspirational flash of a higher light than either reason or the 
senses can give. 

The sum of all that has been taught in this chapter is this : 

I Faith is the Christian means and method of cure, and is based 

upon a correct philosophy of human nature and of the relation of 

the soul to the body. All belief implies some degree of knowl- 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 195 

edge, and faith, which is always united to imagination, is an inward 
seeing, and is the highest form of cognition and degree of know- 
ing. The mind, as all admit, affects the body ; and I affirm that 
its varying states are the body's health or malady. The soul cre- 
ates for itself a body in harmony with it, and is the operating cause 
of its conditions of health and disease. But faith and imagination 
are the most intense and influential forms of mental action that 
can be brought to bear upon the physical organism. The very 
existence of the body, as something outside of the being of the 
mind, is only an inference or belief, an apparent rather than a 
real truth. Therefore to change our belief with regard to the 
body, either involuntarily or by a conscious volitional effort, modi- 
fies its condition. I If we believe and imagine that a change is 
being effected in ourselves, or in others who are in contact with 
us, it will be so ; for whatever in this way the soul predicts will 
find its fulfillment in the altered condition of the body. Fear in 
its varying forms of doubt, anxiety, foreboding, and melancholy, 
is the spiritual root of disease, and a prophecy of it, and faith sus- 
tains the same radical relation to health ; and their previsions and 
predictions will be realized in the corresponding modifications of 
the physical condition. 

Belief being the foundation of all knowledge, as was taught by 
Jacobi, and also by Sir William Hamilton, so it is the ground of 
all reality. To believe that we have a thing and to have it are 
one and the same so far as our mental possession of it is concerned. 
They are inseparable states of consciousness. Hamilton truly 
observes : " The ultimate facts of consciousness are given less in 
the form of cognitions than of beliefs. Consciousness, in its last 
analysis, in other words, our primary experience, is a faith." Be- 
lief in its higher form is a complete conviction that a thing is true, 
or that it really exists. In this sense, to believe that we have a 
thing is a mental appropriation of it, and it becomes to us a reality. 
Its reality to us is in exact proportion to the strength of our faith. 
To believe that we are well, or are becoming so, makes it a reality 
to the extent of our inward conviction of it. This principle waa 



193 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

taught by Jesus the Christ when he said : " Be it unto thee accord- 
ing to thy faith," which expresses a law as uniform in its opera- 
tion in the realm of mind as gravitation is in the region of nature* 
(Mat. ix : 29.) Also in that remarkable saying : " What things 
soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye 
shall have." (Mark xi : 24.) This is based upon a correct phi- 
losophy of the mind, that to have, and to believe that we have, are 
a single and inseparable act of the soul. Take away our belief 
in the possession of anything, even though we may hold it in our 
hands, it is to us as good as annihilated. The testimony of our 
senses to the existence of an object, if we have no faith in its 
reality, brings no evidence or conviction with it. To believe that 
we have a disease is to have it, while the full persuasion of it 
remains. On this subject James Mill truly observes : " To have 
a sensation and to believe that we have it are not distinguishable 
things. When I say ' I have a sensation,' and say ' I believe I have 
it,' I do not express two states of consciousness, but one and the 
same state. Sensation is a feeling ; but a feeling and the belief of 
it are the same thing." (Phenomena of the Human Mind, Vol. 
I, p. 255.) 

It is in accordance with one of the deepest laws of the spiritual 
universe that salvation, in the sense attached to it by the Christ, 
as including the restoration of both body and soul to health and 
harmony, is, and must ever be, through faith. This is not an 
arbitrary condition of it, that might as well have been something 
else, as the making of a pilgrimage, or the offering of a sacrifice, 
but is a necessary prerequisite and concomitant of it. It can 
enter into us as an actual mental possession, and become a living 
reality in no other way. But it is important to remark that 
belief is not a mere passive state of tho intellect, but is also a 
voluntary act. Hence we should not wait for a saving faith to 
come to us, but by a volitional effort use the power we already 
possess. In the Gospels men are blamed for not believing, which 
could not in justice be done if belief and unbelief were wholly 
beyond the control of our volitions. On this point Bain says : 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 197 

" In its esential character, belief is a phase of our active nature, 
otherwise called will." {Note to Mill's Phenomena of the Human 
Mind, Vol. I. p. 394.) 

In conclusion, let me say in the words of another, who in his 
theology is intensely orthodox : " It is the want of faith in our age 
which is the greatest hindrance to the stronger and more marked 
appearance of that miraculous power which is working here and 
there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the final and most import- 
ant reason for the retrogression of miracles." (Christlieb's Mod- 
ern Doubt and Christian Belief, p. 366.) 

If the doctrine of Jesus is true, that in the cure of disease it is 
unto us according to our faith, the only object of a Christian phy- 
sician in giving medicine, and the only ground on which he could 
justify it to himself, is to furnish the patient a nov azw, or standing 
ground, for faith and imagination, on which they may rest their 
Archimedean lever. A bread-pill, or colored water, or the anti- 
quated bones of a reputed saint, are as good as anything else for 
accomplishing this. But perhaps the best device for giving to 
faith a material foothold is found in the dilutions and triturations 
of homeopathy. A sugar-of-milk globule, medicated or unmedi- 
cated, answers every rational purpose of medicine. 



CHAPTER Vm. 

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY ACTION OP THE MIND ON THE BODY. 

Nearly all the physiological processes and functional movements 
of the various organs are carried on by an unconscious and invol- 
untary or automatic mental action. They take place in accord- 
ance with the highest intelligence, and, consequently, must be the 
resultant of some form of mental action. But it is an interesting 
fact, and one that has its practical importance, that all these 
so-called automatic movements may be modified, and even con- 
trolled by the voluntary action of the mind. Take as a familiar 
illustration of this the act of respiration. Breathing is usually 
automatic, and accomplished without any conscious, volitional 
effort. All the muscles concerned in the respiratory movement, 
as the intercostal, the diaphragm, and those of the abdomen act 
when we sleep and when we wake, and without any expenditure 
of will-force on our part. Yet at any moment we can, by our will, 
take those muscles under our control, and the breathing passes 
from an involuntary, automatic movement to a conscious and vol- 
untary act. 

The action of the heart is almost always an involuntary move- 
ment, and effected by an unconscious action of the mind. Yet 
there have been persons who could influence and even control its 
systolic and diastolic motions. ' The distinguished physiologist, 
E. F. Weber, of Leipzig, found that he could completely check the 
beating of his heart. By suspending his breathing, and violently 

198 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE 199 

contracting his chest, he could retard the pulsations; but there 
was danger of carrying it too far and falling into a syncope. 

The contraction of the iris, the colored circle that surrounds the 
pupil of the eye, under the influence of light is a purely reflex or 
involuntary action, and to close the iris would seem to be an im- 
possibility. Yet there are men who have learned how to do this. 
The celebrated Fontana had this power, and Dr. Paxton, a medi- 
cal man now living at Kilmarnock, is said to have the ability to 
contract or expand the iris at will. 

To move the ears is impossible to most men, yet some have 
learned to do it with ease, and all could, by practice, acquire the 
power to do it. Certain movements of the toes are impossible to 
us now, or are effected with great difficulty, and yet there are cases 
where, from the loss of the fingers, persons have acquired the 
ability to use them in writing, sewing, drawing, and painting. 
These facts go to prove that all the muscles of the body are made 
to obey the sovereign will, and that there is no real and essential 
distinction between what we call voluntary and involuntary organs. 
The motor influence in both is the mind, in the one case acting 
preconsciously, in the other consciously, and by a volitional effort. 
"We can use our toes with as much facility and skill as the newly- 
born infant can his fingers, only we have not educated them. 

All the involuntary, physiological movements and vital pro- 
cesses, which are ordinarily carried on by an unconscious action of 
the soul, can be influenced and controlled by a volitional effort of 
the fancy, or imagination, when intelligently directed to the pro- 
duction of a desired result. This is true of the action of the 
liver, the kidneys, the skin, and the processes of digestion, circu- 
lation, excretion, and secretion. The body is the passive instru- 
ment of the mind, and it is in harmony with an established Divine 
order that it should obey its supreme behests. It is not unreas- 
onable to suppose that the time will come when the relation of the 
mind to the body will be so fully comprehended that what are 
called the involuntary functions will be as certainly influenced by 
an intelligent volitional effort as are now the muscles of our arms. 



200 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

All that is necessary is that the now partially-sundered links 
between the organs that act automatically, or by a preconsciou3 
mental influence, and the will should be restored. When this con- 
nection is established, what is now deemed impossible will become 
practically easy, and all the organic actions and physiological 
movements will be under our control, and will be influenced in 
any desired direction by the fancy or imagination, by the power of 
thought and of our faith and volitions. " Thus, it appears that 
even the actions which most distinctly bear the character recog- 
nized as involuntary, uncontrollable, are only so because the ordi- 
nary processes of life furnish no necessity for their control. We 
do not learn to control them, though we could do so, to some 
extent, in the same way that we do not learn to control the 
motions of our ears, although we could do so." {The Phys- 
ical Basis of the Mind, by Gr. H. Lewes, p. 371.) 

All the movements of the body are classed as voluntary or 
involuntary, as they are performed by a conscious effort or an 
unconscious mental influence ; but in either case the moving prin- 
ciple, the motor power, is the mind. There are certain physio- 
logical processes and muscular movements that are supposed to be 
automatic and fixed by an iron necessity, and wholly beyond our 
control. Yet there is no part of the body that is not under the 
dominion of the mind, and that cannot be influenced by an intelli- 
gent voluntary action. It is an error to affirm or believe that 
these movements and functions of an organ cannot be affected, and 
that they are altogether beyond the interference of mind with 
their action, and cannot, by any volitional effort, be modified. 
Darwin, in Zoonomia, mentions the case of a person who could 
suspend the pulsations of the heart at pleasure, and of another 
who could at will move his bowels by accelerating their peristaltic 
action. Lord Brougham speaks of these cases as almost mon- 
strous. But, why so ? They were done in" harmony with some 
law of the voluntary action of the mind on the body, which being 
known would empower us to repeat them. The action of the per- 
spiratory glands would seem to be as far beyond voluntary control 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 201 

as any part or function of the human organism, yet Mayer men- 
tions that some persons have the power of perspiring at will. Prof. 
Beer, of Bonn, has the rare power of contracting or dilating the 
pupil of his eye at any moment. In his case thought seems to be 
the motor power. When he thinks of a very dark space, the pupil 
dilates; when of a very bright spot, the pupil contracts. Here is 
a principle in reference to the influence of thought on the human 
organism of great importance. (Noble: The Human Mind, p. 
124.) In the same way, when we think of something sour, as 
lemon juice, it affects the salivary glands, and causes the mouth to 
water. Thus the thought of an object, as of some medicinal 
preparation, has an effect similar, even if less in degree, to that 
of the thing itself. Through the medium of thought we come into 
contact with the spiritual principle or essence of the drug. It is 
an experiment anyone can try upon himself. Thus, an idea, a 
thought, an imagination, may act as a medicine, or as a poison. 
There is a potential virtue in thought that is not fully understood 
and appreciated. " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 
This is one of the wisest things that Solomon ever said. In the soul 
reside all the active vital powers. Given a certain psychical state, 
and a correspondent bodily condition follows with all the unerring 
certainty of the relation of cause and effect. There is a power in 
thought over our bodily condition that is not recognized in the sci- 
ence of medicine. No person ever dies of disease but from think- 
ing and believing that he is diseased. Here is the root of the 
malady. As Fichte has truly said: "In the mind — in the self- 
supporting life of thought — life itself subsists, for beyond the 
mind there is no true existence. To live truly means to think 
truly, and to discern the truth." (The Way Towards the Blessed 
Life, p. 12.) 

On the influence of thought upon the body Sir William Ham- 
ilton says : " I can in imagination represent the action of speech, 
the play of the muscles of the countenance, or the movement of 
the limbs ; and when I do this, I feel clearly that I awaken a kind 
of tension in the same nerves through which, by an act of will, I 



202 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

can determine an overt and voluntary motion of the muscles ; nay, 
when the imagination is very lively, this external movement is 
actually determined. Thus we frequently see the countenance of 
persons under the influence of imagination undergo various changes ; 
they gesticulate with their hands, they talk to themselves, and all 
this is in consequence of an imagined activity going out into a real 
activity." (Boweris Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton, 
p. 455.) 

We are to bear in mind that imagination is only a mode of 
thought, and every idea in the mind tends, by its inherent nature, 
to an actuality in the body. The effects of imagination are as 
clearly felt, when it acts upon the involuntary and so-called auto- 
matic organs, — as the stomach, the liver, or the intestinal canal, 
— as when it acts upon the muscles that are under the more im- 
mediate dominion of the will. When its force is exerted upon 
these organs, by thinking and believing, the activity we wish to 
induce in them, an imagined action goes forth into an actual one, 
for the only living force of the body is the mind. What physiolo- 
gists call the vis vitce is a mental energy. Matter, whether in 
the human body or in the world at large, is always passive and 
inert, but activity and freedom belong to the essence of spirit. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE MORBIFIC AND SANATIVE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT. 

Mind is the only active power in the universe, and to most people 
its influence is unintelligible and incomprehensible. It is only 
because it acts unseen and unobserved that it has come to be under- 
valued. Its power is hidden from the view of the senses; but the 
most potent forces of nature act silently and with no noise or show. 
The kingdom of the heavens cometh not with observation, or under 
the cognizance of the senses. Mind is the only causal agent in the 
realm of matter, and certainly in the human body. A simple 
thought, which is a mental act or state, has a marvelous power over 
the body. It may in its influence be morbific, or that which 
generates disease, or it may be sanative and promotive of health. 
In many diseases, especially those of a so-called nervous character, 
there is too much thinking, or rather too much thought in one 
direction, and in a wrong direction. This state of thinking and 
feeling is the cause of the bodily condition. As the body is the 
creation of the mind, and is always its ultimation or outward ex- 
pression, a chronic disease is the fixedness of a thought, the petri- 
faction of a morbid idea. Thoughts or ideas are the most real 
things in the universe. They are the interior soul of things, and 
the underlying reality of all outward and visible objects. The 
things we behold in the natural world are the thoughts of God, 
and by studying them we come into communication with his 
thoughts, as we do with the ideas of an author by reading tho 

203 



204 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

words of his book. The mind is the real man, and its thoughts 
act on the body as a spiritual poison, or as a mental medicine ; for 
health and disease, in their spiritual essence, may be resolved into 
modes of thinking. A man is well so long as he thinks, feels, and 
believes himself so, for to be sick and not know it is all the same 
as not to be sick ; and for a physician to tell a patient that he has 
a disease is oftentimes to create it ; and to assure him that he has 
it not, except in his own thought, and cause him to believe it, is a 
short and easy method of curing him. What is all thi3 but a 
change of thought ? It is the substitution of one way of thinking 
for another. 

Let us look for a moment at the power of thought. Whatever 
a man consciously makes or invents is always first a thought, an 
idea, before it is shaped into an objective or external thing. The 
house in which we live, or the ship in which we sail, first exists as 
a spiritual reality in the mind of the architect and builder; the 
picture in the soul of the painter, and the statue in the idea of 
the sculptor. This was the doctrine of Plato four centuries before 
Christ. Everything exists in idea before it can have an external 
and material realization. A visible thing, whether it be a granite 
boulder or a physical disease, is the outness of a thought, the exter- 
nalization of an idea ; and an idea is the inward existence, the spirit- 
ual reality, of a sensible object. But there are false ideas and true 
ones, a right and a wrong way of thinking. A false or fallacious idea 
is ultimated or externally manifested in the body by disease ; and 
then truth is the best medicine. Thought is a creative power, and 
it always forms something in its own image, a likeness and corres- 
pondence of itself. A bad thought, a false and fallacious idea, a 
wrong conception and belief ultimate themselves in the body in 
disease, — acute, if it be a temporary mental state, and chronic, if 
it be a confirmed mode of thinking. Preexistent ideas and feel- 
ings are the patterns after which the body shapes itself by a neces- 
sary law of spiritual cause and material effect. The sincerity and 
deepness of our belief, or recognition of those ideas as realities, is 
always the measure of the extent and permanency of their effects 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 205 

upon the body. The condition of the body is only the interior 
becoming the outward, and the excellence or defect of the idea 
is the body's health or malady. The disease is preceded by an 
a priori wrong way of thinking, and the cure is the result, in every 
case, of an antecedent change of thought and idea. This is the 
philosophy of the system of cure practiced by Jesus the Christ, 
and forever consecrated by him as the Divine method of healing 
both soul and body. Everything resolves itself back into an idea. 
The solid frame work of the world, with all its objects of beauty 
and use, are but the crystalization of God's thoughts. Fulton's 
idea became solidified into a steamboat, Stephenson's into a rail" 
road, and Morse's into a telegraph. A factory is only somebody's 
thought condensed into a material manifestation; and any faulty 
way of thinking, any defect in the original idea, makes the ma- 
chinery go wrong, and causes an imperfect manufacture. Here is 
the whole spiritual theory of disease ; for what is true of a mill is 
more certainly true of the body and its relation to the mind. Men 
have only begun to realize the power of thought over the external 
organism, — the influence of ideas, of imagination, of faith, and feel- 
ing over the corporeal condition and the physiological functions. 
This is, as I have just said, the Divine method of cure, because 
the relation of soul and body is analogous to that which God sus- 
tains to the visible world. Jesus the Christ, who exhibited the 
highest type of humanity, and was, consequently, the divinest 
manifestation of God, found the remedy for disease in truth. He 
came to make known the truth, and thereby save the lost, or those 
who, in their bewilderment, had wandered away from it. Truth is 
that which is. Error, which is the soul of disease, is that which 
is not. The one is the reality of things ; the other has no being. 
If, then, we supplant in the mind of another an error by substitut- 
ing for it a positive truth, we put something where before there 
was in reality nothing. Disease is often but an error, a fallacious 
idea, a falsity, a wrong way of thinking, and, consequently, in 
itself a nihility or nothingness. In all those cases the best remedy 
and the only specific is the opposite truth. Here the spiritual 



206 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

teacher and the physician meet and become one. Of this we have 
the highest illustration in the life and work of Jesus the Christ. 

Every thought which has truth for its foundation, or has its root 
in the one and only Reality, has in it the life of God ; just as a 
particle of water proceeding from the ocean by emanation or evapo- 
ration, is a miniature sea, a microscopic ocean, and has all the 
properties of the Atlantic, whence it came. Hence, a thought, a 
truth, whose inward essence is always Divine, has in it the very 
life of Grocl, and must have the highest therapeutic virtue of any- 
thing in the universe. The mind is the only life of the body, and 
the only real and enduring thing in human nature. No one ever 
dies of what is called disease, as has been said in a previous chap- 
ter. It is only when faith, hope, and imagination lose their hold 
upon the organic structure, and the soul relaxes its grasp upon the 
body, that it yields. Then it goes down like a scuttled ship in a 
storm. It is only kept afloat by the buoyancy that the mind im- 
parts to it, and when the connection between it and its life-pre- 
server is sundered, it goes under the waves to rise no more. When 
the correspondence between the mind and body ceases, the body 
dies as a lamp expires when the oil is exhausted. 

Thought is the grand characteristic of man, and belongs to the 
essence of the soul. The word man, according to Max Miiller, is 
an ancient Sanscrit word meaning to think, and is the root of the 
Zend word manthra, speech. Man may be defined as the being who 
thinks and speaks. This separates him by a wide chasm from all the 
orders of animals below him. A change of thought, or of a fixed 
mode of thinking, must of necessity modify the state of the soul, 
as the very existence of the soul is identical with thought, and it 
creates the body into its own image and likeness. It is easy from 
this to see how much it must have to do with health and disease. 

If love is the life of man, as Swedenborg affirms, thought is the 
existence, or outward manifestation, of that vital element or prin- 
ciple, and the quality of that existence must depend upon the char- 
acter of his thoughts. The mind always thinks, and must as long 
as it lives. It was the opinion of Kant, expressed in his Anthro- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 207 

pology, that we always think when we sleep; that to cease to 
dream would be an extinction of our life. He also says that we 
can dream more in a minute than we can act in a day, and that 
the great rapidity of the train of thought in sleep is one of the 
principal causes why we do not always recollect what we dream. 
He elsewhere observes that the cessation of a force to act is tanta- 
mount to its cessation to be. With the above view Sir William 
Hamilton agrees. (Bowen's Metaphysics of Sir William Ham- 
ilton, p. 220.) Long before Kant, Cicero, the Koman philoso- 
pher and orator, affirmed that the mind is always active. He says : 
"Nunquam animus cogitatio "et niotu vacuus esse potest" — the 
soul can never be destitute of thought and activity. 

Being or life comes to its first active manifestation in thought. 
In the beginning — in the first principle or pure being, as the 
original term means, — was the Word or Thought of God. (John 
i: 1.) By this all things were and are created. So in man, who 
is the image of God, thought is the first manifestation of the liv- 
ing principle in him, or that by which being (in German seyn) 
goes forth into ar-istence (daseyii) and into a bodily expression. 
When we say that a man's thoughts are employed on business, or 
trade, or government, or art, or philanthrophy, we mean the cur- 
rent of his life tends to that form of activity. It is set or fixed 
(which is the radical meaning of the word think) in that particu- 
lar direction. The same is true of disease, its inmost essence 
being a fixity of thought in a false position. Especially is tins 
true when the morbid condition becomes chronic. Our life 
always flows out into manifestation in the direction of our thoughts, 
and disease is only a state, or, as the word etymological] y signifies, 
a standing still of thought, in other words, an immovable fixed- 
ness of a morbid way of thinking. But as our varying modes of 
thought are, to a eertain extent, under the control of the self- 
determining power of the will, so to the same extent health and 
disease are under the dominion of the mind, or the voluntary 
exercise of faith and imagination. 

If there is any power resident in human nature which possesses 



208 THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 

a creative energy and a modifying influence over the bodily condi- 
tion, and one that lies within the compass of the God-given abili- 
ties of the soul so to exercise as to change the morbid mode of 
thinking, that is, the spiritual essence of disease, let us search 
earnestly among our faculties to find it. The practical value of 
the discovery will be a full reward for any sincere effort that may 
be expended in the quest. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DIVINE FUNCTION OP IMAGINATION IN THE CURE OP DISEASE. 

The faculty of imagination, in the estimate of the popular mind, 
and even among those who pass current in the world for scientific 
men, has been greatly undervalued. It has been degraded to a 
lower level among our intellectual powers than by divine right 
belongs to it. It is really one of the highest and most influential 
powers of the soul. 

We have been educated to believe that an imaginary disease, 
or one that owes its origin and continuance to an abnormal action 
of this mental power upon the body, is an unreal one. It is sup- 
posed to be the magnifying into undue proportions of what has no 
importance, or the creation of something out of nothing. This is 
false in philosophy and untrue in fact. The imagination, or, as 
Fichte calls it, the fancy, is the formative power of the body. It 
has in it a creative potency. God created, and perpetually cre- 
ates, the world by some power that answers to imagination in us. 
And how much of our life do we spend in a world of our own 
making ! The creations of fiction are as real as those of history, 
and there is as much truth in the one as in the other. Fiction, in 
the etymological sense of the word, is that which the mind makes. 
Poetry, from a Greek word of a similar meaning, has the same sig- 
nification. They are mental creations. The imagination is the 
image-making faculty, or that which forms an idea that it can so 
project outward as to view it outside of the being of the mind. It 

209 



210 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

creates the world in which we really live, and the body by which 
the soul enters into the limitations of time and space, and where 
we temporarily dwell. We wish to elevate this most important 
faculty from its degradation in mental science and the estimation 
of the world to its native Divine dignity and importance. 

The imagination is a spiritual force, and a creative power. An 
imaginary disease is not an unreal one, for we cannot fancy a 
thing that has no existence. " What the populace say about im- 
agination presenting images that we mistake for reality is, like 
popular philosophy in general, pure nonsense. No man ever 
imagined or can imagine anything that has not reality somewhere, 
and this whether waking or sleeping." (Life: Its Nature, 
Varieties, and Phenomena, by Leo H. Grindon, p. 415.) The 
creations of the imagination are as real as our own bodies, or any 
of the objects that come to our perception through the senses. To 
cure a disease of mind or body by this power or force is not to 
heal a person of what never ailed him, or of what had no actual 
existence. The very fact that a man imagines himself sick is a 
proof that he is so ; for the disease is only the effect of an abnor- 
mal action of this creative power. 

The imagination is both an involuntary and a voluntary power 
of the mind. In its involuntary and preconscious action, it builds 
up the organism, heals its wounds, reacts against every abnormal 
condition, and carries on all the physiological processes and so- 
called automatic movements. But the will or self -determining 
power of the soul, guided by an instinctive intelligence, may take 
all these processes under its control, and what is called the vital 
force — which can never be distinguished from the action of the 
mind upon the body — can be precipitated upon any given point 
of the organism for the modification of its condition, and the pro- 
duction of a desired sanative result. 

Could we trace the mental history of every disease, we should 
see how much it was the product of this power ; and if we could 
see the hidden influences that were at work in every case of cure, 
we should perceive how much was owing to the productive spirit* 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 211 

ual force of the imagination, combined with faith in effecting the 
therapeutic result. In these two spiritual forces, or agencies, we 
have the most important of all curative devices. They ought to 
be more profoundly studied, as they possess a higher sanative value 
than all that the Materia Medica has given us. Nowhere do we 
find their efficiency so fully illustrated as in the life and practice 
of Jesus the Christ. By him they have received the seal and 
sanction of the Divine method of cure. 

From what has been said above we see why the "irregular," 
or unauthorized, practitioner is so often successful where the 
" learned ignorance " of the regular physician has failed. The 
first somehow brings into action the divine principles of faith and 
imagination, and directs their force upon the body ; and the world 
accepts the result as almost if not quite miraculous. The time 
may come when there will be an entire revolution of public opin- 
ion, and the now unorthodox physician, who appeals, whether he 
knows it or not, more directly to the two principles that in the high- 
est degree influence the bodily condition, will be accepted as the 
man who is legally authorized to prescribe for " the ills that flesh is 
heir to." He who can best minister to a mind diseased, and con- 
trol and direct these mental forces so as to modify the corporeal 
condition, is the best physician; and if he is " constrained by the 
love of Christ," or the same benevolent impulse that actuated 
him, he is in the regular line of apostolic succession, even though 
no mitred priest has laid hands upon his head, and consecrated 
him to a work the importance of which the ecclesiastical func- 
tionary understands but little or even nothing. 

Tf what has been said above is true as to the real principle of 
cure, then the only rational design in prescribing material reme- 
dies is to furnish aids to faith and imagination, which are the 
efficient cause of that alteration of the bodily and mental condition 
that we call recovery from disease. If a patient's faith is so weak 
that it cannot walk alone, give him a drug to be a cane on which 
a saving and healing faith may lean for support; or prescribe 
for him some pharmaceutical preparation, homeopathic or alio- 



212 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

pathic, as a crutch, by the aid of which the imagination may hob- 
ble along in the direction of health and happiness. But blessed 
is the man who has passed the infantile state of his existence and 
been weaned of his dependence upon material things, and who can 
walk erect in the Divine dignity of his spiritual nature as an 
image of God, and whose faith brings him into living contact and 
conjunction with the Central Life. 

If it be true, as has been admitted by the intuitive reason of 
mankind, and has become an axiom of philosophy, that inertia 
is a property and necessary condition of matter, or, in other 
words, that it can neither move nor effect any change in its state 
unless it be acted upon by some force outside of itself and distinct 
from it, then it follows that there are no automatic or self-origin- 
ated movements or changes of the material organism. Every 
change in the bodily status in the direction of disease or health is 
an effect for which medical philosophy must find a cause that is 
not in the body itself, and I verily believe and, without hesitation, 
affirm that the only efficient cause is some action of mind. The 
body, in ail its varying conditions and changes, is only an out- 
ward manifestation, a material and sensible expression, of the state 
of the soul. This is, under God, the creative power of the body, — 
it speaks and it is done. The mental forces that originate and 
modify the condition of the body are faith and imagination. 
These may act preconsciously, or voluntarily and with conscious 
effort. Thus, the whole science of medicine, through all the ages 
of its history and all its conflicting schools, may be condensed into 
a single sentence, in which they are all reduced to an essential 
unity, — if you would cure disease, call into active operation the 
principles of faith and imagination. All curative devices that 
do not effect this are powerless. 

As Prof. Krauth has said in his annotations on Berkeley's 
" Principles of Human Knowledge : " " No theory of the human 
body is worthy of attention which does not acknowledge the soul 
as the controlling force of the body." The psychical is first. The 
mind is the conditioning power of the material. It is the organic 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 213 

ing force that lifts the organic out of the inorganic. In its rela- 
tion to the body the mind is a sort of vice-creator, or secondary 
formative power; and this productive and constructive energy is 
something very like what we call imagination. I as firmly believe 
as I do in my own existence that there is here a principle of vast 
practical importance, and one that contains the seed of a valuable 
and efficient system of phrenopathy, or mental medicine. 

The things seen by the imagination are called phantoms, by 
which is meant unreal appearances. That they are so is an 
assumption not capable of proof. They may be as real as the 
objects of the external world. We have the same evidence of the 
reality of the one that we have of the other, as both are seen only 
in the mind. When I assert that heat is in the fire, it is a phan- 
tom or fallacious appearance, for the real truth is that it is a sen- 
sation in me. When one says that he has a pain in some part of 
his body, as in his hand, his head, or his stomach, that is a phan- 
tom, for the body has no sensation, no feeling. The pain is no 
more there than when it is felt in an amputated limb. But we 
can imagine a pain until we feel it ; and we can imagine and fear 
a disease until, by the creative power of these mental forces, we 
really have it. So the same is true of health. By a voluntary 
and intelligent use of faith and imagination, we can effect a cure of 
disease in ourselves and others. 

I know of no writer who takes a higher view of the imagination 
as a creative force than Jacob Behmen, the theosophist. Instead 
of looking upon it as an impotent faculty of the mind, dealing in 
fiction and airy nothings, he viewed it as the greatest power in 
nature. All outward power that we exercise over the things 
about us is but a shadow in comparison with that inward power 
that resides in imagination and will. It communicates with eter- 
nity and cooperates with the Divine Creative Life, and nothing is 
impossible to it. It was considered by him as one of the chief 
instruments of conversion and regeneration, and its use was recom- 
mended as such ; and he might just as well have said as much of 
its influence in the cure of diseases of the mind and the body had 
he traced its influence in that direction. 



214 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

Van Helmont declares that there is an inner power of the soul 
whence the mightiest events, the deepest impressions, and the most 
decisive effects proceed. He says : " I have hitherto avoided re- 
vealing the great secret that the strength lies concealed in man 
merely through the suggestion and power of the imagination, to 
work outwardly, and to impress this strength on others, which then 
continues of itself, and operates on the remotest objects." (Enne- 
moser's History of Magic, Vol. II, p. 246.) 

Ennemoser, who had a clear perception of the influence of the 
mind upon the body, says of the power of the imagination, that 
an intensely active imagination transforms the ideas of fancy into 
permanent shapes, which even obtain a certain plastic firmness in 
the body. " The soul creates and the body forms, and in fact 
only to that shape which has been held before it. The imagina- 
tion is the creative and inventive power of the soul, which endeav- 
ors to reproduce outwardly that which it inwardly believed ; and 
this succeeds more especially when the body is in a passive condi 
tion, and the outward senses are dormant." (History of Magic, 
Vol. H, p. 101.) 

Imagination is an element in an act of saving or healing faith, 
as was recognized by Behmen. The person of an active or strong 
imagination is one whose faith is the " substance of things hoped 
for." It gives life and reality to faith. Stewart, the Scotch meta- 
physician, came near expressing this truth. It was his opinion 
that " the exercise of the imagination is always accompanied with 
a belief that the objects of the imagination exist." Prof. Ferrier 
remarks of this opinion of Stewart that it appears to him to be 
founded in truth. (Ferrier' s Philosophical Works, Vol. Ill, 
p. 515.) 

Imagination is the power by which the thoughts, the ideas of 
the mind, are projected outward into an actuality in the body. In 
connection with faith in Grod, the ever-present and ever-active 
creative Force, the body is moulded by it into the external expres- 
sion of what the mind conceives and desires as a state of physical 
health. It is a power when properly educated and conjoined.witb 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 215 

faith that brings the soul, in its curative effort, into communica- 
tive contact with the Immeasurable Life, and thus feeds and au<r- 
ments our noblest powers from their Eternal Source. It is in us 
the image, or finite expression, of God's creative energy, and, con- 
sequently, when used under the guidance of a spiritual intelli- 
gence, is the greatest healing power in nature. 

Imagination is only a mode of thought, and its power is only an 
illustration of the influence of thought. What passes in the 
Church parlance under the name of "conversion," or "a change 
of heart," is effected by this transforming power. The doctrine of 
justification by faith, which is the central idea of the Pauline 
development of Christianity, and which, after having been buried 
out of sight by the ritualism and extemalism of the Papal Church, 
was restored as a saving power to the Christian system by Luther, 
and which was again dropped out of the creed of the religious 
world until revived by the Wesleys, and then became a saving 
power to millions of souls, owes its efficiency to the imagination. 
The penitent comes into the idea or belief that he is condemned of 
God, and is burdened with the sense of guilt, which is called con- 
viction. He is now willing and desirous to be saved, and is 
taught to believe, that is, to think or imagine that God now for- 
gives and saves him. This is only a belief of the truth (as God 
forgives all and condemns none), and then his burden of self- 
imposed condemnation rolls off, his self-torment, doubt, and mental 
turmoil cease, and, coming to an inward sense of justification by 
faith or imagination, he enters into a solid and enduring peace. 
(Rom. v: 1.) But imagination has much to do with this, as was 
taught by Behmen, and as anyone can see who can analyze the 
mental process involved in the change of the spiritual status of the 
convert. But I charge the reader to bear in mind that the change 
is none the less real by being effected mainly by the transforming 
power of the imagination. In a connection with the Church for 
more than forty years, and by an unbiased study of the psycho- 
logical phenomena of revivals, I know that the mental metamor- 
phosis, called conversion, has often in it the element of perma- 



216 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

nency, and the soul by it becomes anchored in the Divine Life. 
The same remarks will apply to the cure of all diseases of the 
body and mind, which constituted the fullness of the idea of 
salvation as it existed in the mind of the Christ, and is expressed 
in the Gospels. 



CHAPTER XI. 

INSTINCT AS A REVELATION FROM GOD AND A GUIDE T J HEALTH 
AND HAPPINESS. 

We have seen that there is a two-fold life of the soul, which 
manifests itself in the two forms of conscious and unconscious 
mental action. The preconscious life and activity of the mind is 
seen in the building up of the organism, and in carrying on all 
the physiological processes. These mechanical and geometrizing 
effects seem to be under the control and direction of the highest 
and most unerring intelligence, though acting unconsciously so far 
as our voluntary mental action is concerned. But all the instinct' 
ive actions of the mind belong to this region of our mental nature. 
There is a dignity and importance attached to these that have been 
but poorly appreciated in philosophy, in religion, and in the sci- 
ence of medicine. 

Instinct may be defined as an original impulse of the soul, im- 
pressed upon it by the author of our being, toward a certain form 
of thinking, feeling, and acting. Hartmann, who represents the 
latest and, at the present time, is the most popular exponent of the 
idealistic philosophy of Germany, defines instinct to be acting in 
conformity with a purpose, without any consciousness of that pur- 
pose. (Bowen's Modem Philosophy, p. 437.) Archbishop 
Whately says "Instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of 
action independent of any consideration on the part of the agent 
of the end to which the action leads." But in the phenomena of 

217 



218 THE DIYINE LAW OE CURE. 

instinct we see an exhibition of the highest intelligence, and, 
though it may act without our volitions and even without our con- 
sciousness, it can with no propriety be called blind. Sir William 
Hamilton's definition of it is still worse. According to him, 
"Instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a 
work of intelligence and knowledge." If this was true, the wonder 
is that it should make no mistakes, or, if any, so few. Dr. Paley's 
definition of it is better, because blindness and ignorance are 
not attributed to it, but it is still defective. "Instinct," he says, 
"is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instruc- 
tion." It is an inborn predisposition and tendency towards a 
given form of action by which God perpetually acts upon and in 
the human soul, and, when yielded to without obstruction and with- 
out any depraved perversion, leads us, by an unconscious thinking 
and by an intelligence originally and continually impressed upon 
the mind by the Father of spirits, unerringly in the right direc- 
tion. It is not confined in its action to the wants and demands of 
the lower nature, but its influence is felt in the highest regions of 
our spiritual being. What we call conscience is only an instinct- 
ive recognition of what is right and wrong, accompanied by a 
Divine impulse to do the one and refrain from the other, analo- 
gous to what occurs in all animals when they are seen spontane- 
ously to reject in their food whatever would be injurious to them. 
This they do without any knowledge of the laws of physiological 
chemistry, which gives us light as to the adaptation of food to the 
needs of the animal economy. Appetency is an innate seeking for 
something, a desire or reaching out of the mind for that which will 
supply a conscious need. It is a prescription of what we call nature, 
— which is only another name for the God-life within us, — oi 
what the mind and body require for their nourishment, their 
growth, and happiness. It relates more to the department of feel- 
ing than to that of pure intellect. If this department of our nat- 
ure could be relieved from the ban of a false theology, and the 
unnatural system of ethics that grows out of it, and could become 
a subject of education as much as the reason and the memory are, 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 219 

it would become a guide iu duty and morals far nearer infallibility 
than the mandates of popes or the decisions of ecclesiastical coun- 
cils. If we derive our being from God, then the fundamental 
laws of our nature are expressions of the will of God, and our 
spiritual instincts have the sacredness of the utterances of Sinai. 
Either this or atheism is true. Instinct being an original and 
ante-natal predisposition of mind toward a certain mode of action 
is as much a Divine law in the human spirit as gravitation and 
chemical affinity are in the realm of external nature. A genuine 
instinct, not modified by a false education, is a revelation from 
God and a mode of knowing the Divine will as much as is the 
Decalogue. Kant, with all his cold, intellectual scepticism, is 
compelled to exclaim " Instinct is the voice of God." Hartmann 
in his " Philosophy of the Unconscious," attributes it to that mys- 
terious power of the soul for which we have no name, — in Ger- 
man, hellsehen, in French, clairvoyance, — which is considered 
by him as Divine, as it transcends the ordinary conscious, volun- 
tary powers of man. This takes it from the dunghill of total 
depravity and the compost heap of things rejected by an unreason- 
ing theology and unnatural moral philosophy, which excludes God 
as an active and ever-operating force from human nature, and 
places it on a throne among the princes of the earth. It is no 
longer an outcast and a condemned and banished criminal driven 
into a hiding place, but it sits at the gate among the rulers of the 
land. 

The relation of this department of the soul tG health is a most 
important one. No one will be disposed to deny that the almost 
uniform health of the lower animals, especially when their life 
has not been interfered with by man, is owing to their following 
the law of their nature and the guidance of their instincts. These 
are "a pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night" to 
lead them to the promised land of their highest destiny, — the sum- 
mum honum of the animal soul. So. in human society the highest 
state of health of mind and body will never be realized until 
our instinctive nature is allowed to have a voice in the regulation 



220 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

of our lives, and walk side by side and hand in hand with our 
more fallible reason. Then every man's best physician will dwell 
in his own heart, and can be called from the Divine depths of his 
own nature to prescribe for his bodily ills and mental ailments. 
Animals when sick are often observed to seek for plants which 
when in health they reject as food. But in man there are all the 
instincts that there are in the lower orders, and these, when 
properly educated, would furnish a better treatment of disease 
than all the medical libraries of the world contain. In the pre- 
conscious region of the mind there are spiritual instincts by which 
men are much more influenced than by their boasted reason. One 
of the deepest and divinest of these is the tendency of the human 
soul to return unto God, from whose being it issued into conscious 
individuality. As all rivers seek the ocean whence they came, 
and as "fire ascending seeks the sun," so all souls tend back toward 
their Source. However far we may be removed from Him by a 
voluntary or involuntary spiritual remoteness which, in its essence, 
is a moral unlikeness to Him, we shall by a divine elasticity inher- 
ent in all human souls, rebound from the point of greatest dis- 
tance and return to union with Him. As instinctively as the new- 
born infant seeks the mother's breast, so the soul of man, when 
left to its own Divine tendencies, and to the pressing nature of its 
inmost needs, is drawn to God to seek spiritual nutriment from 
the bosom of the Infinite Life. There is something in the soul, 
especially in the religious element, which is deep-seated in human 
nature, which spontaneously tends to vent itself in prayer and pour 
out itself in supplication to God, 

There is an instinct of worship. The history of the race proves 
this. The universal prevalence of some form of adoration can be 
accounted for only in this way. It is an instinctive movement of 
the Divine life that is concealed in the depths of all souls. The 
Divine Life is not something imported into human nature irom 
without, as we have shown in a previous chapter, but is there 
already as the inmost ground of our being ; and complete separa- 
tion from God would be an annihilation of our individual exist* 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 221 

ence. This Divine element of the soul expresses itself in worship, 
— not necessarily in the pomp and ceremony of cathedrals, but 
in the devout silence of adoring love in the sacred stillness of the 
soul, the hallowed solitude of our own hearts. A genuine relig- 
ious life, when left to act for itself without obstruction, will cre- 
ate its own forms of manifestation. It is a law of our being that 
all the feelings of the soul tend to ultimate themselves in some 
outward expression. To confine all religion to a stereotyped form, 
and to limit its manifestation by the enclosure of a liturgy, is to 
deposit the life of Christ in a sepulchre, and lay a stone upon the 
door of it, which can be rolled away only by an angelic influence. 
With regard to the instinctive action of the mind, we may 
remark that it is intuitively true that whatever is perfectly natural 
is Divine. This is self-evident, if we admit God to be the Author 
of nature and the ever-present Force whose uniform action con- 
stitutes the laws of nature. And to live in harmony with what is 
Diviue within us is healthfulness, holiuess, or wholeness. If there 
is such a thing as the voice of God in man, — which you may call, 
if you will, the dictate of nature, — it is found in that range of 
mental action which has been denominated instinct. Here God 
speaks as plainly as on the tables of stone. The word comes from 
the Latin, and means "inwardly moved." But it is the Divinity 
within that is the moving force. We may then say in the lan- 
guage of Pope, — 

"And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, 
In this 't is God directs, in that 't is man." 

There is in nature a Divine, Intelligent Life. Wliat we call 
instinct is the action of this intelligent, living principle. The 
actions commoidy denominated instinctive are exhibitions in a 
wider form of the same creative energy which moulds the various 
organs of the body, and maintains them in their integrity and 
functional activity, aud which we have called preconscious mental 
action. This intelligent Life in nature impels the bee to construct 
i:s cell, the beaver its dam, and the bird its nest. In plants it is 



222 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

the controlling influence in their formation and movements. So 
marvelous are the phenomena exhibited by plants, so similar to 
what we see in animals, that Empedocles, among the ancients, and 
Darwin and Dr. Percival, in more recent times, have supposed 
them susceptible of pleasure and pains, emotions and ideas. 
Descending to the mineral kingdom we still trace the action of an 
Intelligent Life. In man, besides all the instincts which he has 
in common with animals, it is seen to coalesce with his voluntary 
powers, and rises to the highest exhibitions of artistic genius in 
music, poetry, painting, architecture, and every department of me- 
chanical skill. It even becomes intuition, and an interior, Divine 
Word. But in each and all these cases it is the operation of the 
same Intelligent Life and Thought that govern nature in her 
three grand departments or kingdoms. 

As an eloquent writer and accomplished scholar has said: 
" God is the organizing framer and preserver of the world of liv- 
ing things ; instinct is the method by which his energy takes effect. 
It is the general faculty of the entire living fabric, underlying 
and determining all activities which transpire, either invisibly in 
the organs themselves, or as played forth to observation, thus 
bearing the same relation to the general structure which the con- 
structive chemical forces bear to the crystal. Instinct, in a word, is 
the operation of life, whether promoting the health, the preserva' 
tion or the reproduction of an organized frame, or any part of 
such frame, and whether animal or vegetable. ( Grindon's Life: 
Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena, p. 510.) 

" Instinct," says Dr. Mason Good, " is the law of the living prin- 
ciple ; instinctive actions are the actions of the living principle per- 
vading and regulating all organized matter. It applies equally to 
plants and to animals, and to every part of the plant and to every 
part of the animal, so long as such part continues alive." {Book 
of Nature, Series 2, Lecture IY.) Virey affirms that "internal 
impulses of life constitute acts of instinct in plants the same as in 
animals." The distinguished physiologist, Dr. Laycock, remarks: 
" Inherent in the primordial cell of every organism, whether it be 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 223 

animal or vegetable, and in all the tissues which are developed 
out of it, there is an intelligent power or agent which, acting in 
all cases independently of the consciousness of the organism, and 
whether the latter be endowed with consciousness or not, forms mat- 
ter into machines and machinery of the most singular complexity 
with the most exquisite skill, and of wondrous beauty, for a fixed, 
manifest, and predetermined object, — namely, the preservation and 
welfare of the individual, and the continuance of the species." He 
also affirms that this wonderful principle exhibits a knowledge of 
all that is known in human science, — in chemistry, electricity, 
magnetism, mechanics, hydraulics, optics, acoustics, — far tran- 
scending the limited knowledge of the human intellect. This intel- 
ligent living agent that presides over the construction of organs 
directs also in the use of the organs constructed. This intelligent 
and benevolent principle and force, call it by what name you will, 
— Brahma, Osiris, Zeus, Allah, Jehovah, — is the Life of God in 
nature, which perpetually creates and unerringly governs the 
world and all it contains. It was said by some of the ancient phi 
losophers, Deus est anima brutorum, God is the life of brutes 
He is also the life of every vegetable organism, from the lichen on 
the granite boulder to the Washingtonia gigantea of California. 
Virgil somewhere says that the bees have in them a portion of the 
Divine Mind. Addison, in the Spectator, declares that these 
intelligent operations which we call instinct come not from any 
law of mechanism, but are an immediate impression from the first 
Mover, and are only the Divine energy acting in the creature. 
Newton, in a scholium to the Principia, considers the actions of 
animals — and the same would be true of man so far as he is an 
animal — as the constant, direct, and immediate operation of the 
Deity Himself. Lord Brougham, while admitting that this doct- 
rine exhibits the finger of God as perpetually working before our 
eyes, and that it brings us constantly into His presence, respect- 
fully, and, as it seems to me, unsuccessfully, attempts to combat it. 
Either Christian theism or atheism is true, as there is no posi- 
tion that is logically tenable between them. 



224 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

In concluding the discussion of the subject of instinct I desire 
to call the attention of the reader to one remark. This Divine 
principle always acts towards a given end, — the highest health 
and happiness of the individual. It gives an impulse as certain 
in its action as the law of gravitation towards the right use of the 
organs it constructs. We should examine the depths of our inner 
consciousness to find this Divine propulsion or tendency, and yield 
to it, as pointing by the finger of God in the direction in which 
wholeness and health lie. With this view of it Eichte says : " The 
highest within me independently of consciousness and the immedi- 
ate object of consciousness is the impulse. The impulse is the 
highest representation of the intelligence in nature." (The Sci- 
ence of Hights, p. 497.) 

An unperverted instinct being the operation of the Divine Lifa 
in man, and including in it the highest intelligence to point out 
the right way, and an impulse to walk in it, is the most unerring 
guide to health and happiness. It could become to us as the clew 
of Ariadne to conduct us, in our bewilderment, out of the laby- 
i rinth of disease and trouble, if we had the faith and courage to 
• follow it, and if our spiritual vision were not so blurred audi 
clouded as to render it difficult for us to discern it. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE HIGHER FORMS OF MENTAL LIFE AND ACTION, AND THEIR 
CURATIVE INFLUENCE. 

The preconseious range of the mind's activity is not confined to 
the formation of the tissues nor to the carrying on of all the invol- 
untary movements of the organism, nor to the instinctive opera- 
tions of the soul, but manifests its phenomena in all the higher 
workings of the mind. It often exhibits phenomena which far 
transcend its ordinary conscious powers, and above and beyond 
anything that it can accomplish by any volitional effort, and thus 
demonstrates its native divinity and its celestial citizenship. As 
God is immanent in human nature, there is something infinite in 
the capacities and possibilities of every soul. It sometimes asserts 
its Divine freedom, rises above the range of the senses, breaks 
loose from their trammels, and operates in a way analogous to that 
of angels and spirits without organic conditions. " For," as 
Morell has said, " as the conscious life of the soul links us by 
numberless gradations to the sense-world, so the preconscious life 
of the soul brings us into a series of relationships with the spiritual 
world." Man is spiritually an amphibia, or exhibits the phe- 
nomena of a double life. While possessing faculties and organs 
that adapt him to a life on the world that is manifested to the 
senses, he has faculties and powers, often only in an undeveloped 
rudimentary state, that connect him with a range of life on a 
higher plane of existence. The younger Fichte, after a long and 

225 



226 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

patient study of these higher phenomena of the mind's action, has 
discovered the central fact, the underlying principle, that explains 
them all. He comes to the conclusion that they exhibit a different 
relation of the soul to its own organism from the ordinary one ; 
and that " besides the ordinary states of consciousness, demonstra- 
bly connected with the nerves and brain, there exist others also, 
the constitution of which leads us to the necessary admission that 
the soul developes them out of itself while in a condition relatively 
or absolutely free from the influence of the body. These latter 
states demonstrably distinguish themselves by a preponderating 
vivacity, rapidity, and intensity." (Contributions to Mental 
Philosophy, p. 69.) 

If the mind can, and sometimes does, act in the present state of 
existence free from the external apparatus of the body, and inde- 
pendent of organic conditions, then we find here an unerring pro- 
phetic intimation of its immortality, at least a philosophical and 
demonstrated basis for the universally prevalent belief of this, 
which lies so deeply imbedded in the religious consciousness of the 
race. 

The higher forms of mental phenomena of which we speak in 
this chapter have been exhibited by all the religions of the world, 
especially in their earlier history, and constitute a large share of 
their marvelous and so-called miraculous element, and have given 
to those religions their currency and access to the popular belief. 
Among these we may mention clairvoyance, or mental perception, 
clairaudience, or an internal hearing, second sight, the neo-pla- 
tonic ecstasy, somnambulism and the trance, the prophetic vision, 
or a discernment of the future, and all the phenomena of revela- 
tion, intuition, and inspiration. These are not, in the ordinary 
sense, miraculous gifts, but are powers belonging to the nature of 
all souls, but in most individuals existing 'potentially rather than 
as a fully educated or developed mental activity. In all these 
manifestations of the latent powers of the soul we discover in them 
a greater or less degree of freedom from bodily conditions. This 
is a fact common to them all. They seem to be the result of an 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 227 

emancipation of the soul from the thraldom of the body. The body 
which it has formed as its representative on the plane of sense is, 
as it were, laid aside. Paul had experiences of this independent 
action of the mind, and was caught up into the heavens, and 
declared that he knew not whether he was in the body or out of 
it. (2 Cor. xii: 1-4.) I am aware that Dr. Carpenter, one of 
the profoundest physiological scholars of this or any age, has 
attributed many of these phenomena to an unconscious cerebration. 
But this is taking an effect for a cause. There may be a corres- 
ponding action of the brain, but it is only the result of an antecedent 
movement of the mind. But this unconscious cerebral activity is 
an hypothesis incapable of proof. Fichte is no doubt much nearer 
the truth in referring them to a preconscious mental action ; and 
it is more than probable that the mind in these exalted states acts . 
independently of the bodily organism, and rises out of its element- I 
ary and rudimentary condition, and exhibits an activity and a dis- * 
play of powers premonitory of its higher state in the life to come. 
Its latent powers come into action, and the soul begins to live 
eternal life. 

These states are by no means to be considered as abnormal, but 
as natural to man. Their influence upon the bodily condition, 
when thSy are reached by a normal and slow process of develop- 
ment, is often most salutary. While the mind is thus freed from 
the body, it seems to possess an increased power over it, and dis- 
ease is often relieved or wholly cured by these higher experiences. 
In this state of emancipated and heightened intelligence, we come 
to the perception of the " soul of things." The mind is raised to 
the realm of causation ; the material world becomes a shadow, and 
spiritual things the only substantial realities. The body ceases to 
be the man, and we become all soul. Disease is traced to its root 
in some abnormality of mind, and, being viewed as spiritual, is 
brought under the control of spirit. We are no longer sense- 
bound, but rise to the perception of truth in its reality, and above 
the fallacious appearances of the senses. 

How we may attain to this more exalted range of mental life 



228 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

and action is a question of great practical importance. We must 
acquire the habit of forgetting the body that we may become 
spirit. It is a state that has been called by the writers on the 
higher forms of religious life and experience a state of recollection, 
and by Bernard of Clairvaux was denominated contemplation. 
The mind is recalled into itself. The external sense-world is 
shut out of thought and perception. All voluntary and conscious 
mental action is suspended, and in this state of passivity, or, as 
Madame Guyon called it, quietism, we come at once into the 
involuntary and preconscious range of the mind's activity. Our 
intuitive perceptivity is quickened by the general sphere of intel- 
ligence in the spiritual world. We come into receptive communi- 
cation with the uncreated Word, the living Light, that has illumin- 
ated the prophets of all religions and of every clime. In this con- 
dition of abstraction from the world of sense the Spirit is 
received that "teaches all things" and "guides into all truth" 
(John xiv: 2G; xvi: 13); and inspiration is no longer viewed 
as an historic fact of the remote past, but an attainable, practica- 
ble experience of religion today. In this preconscious range of 
the mind's action we come into closer interior relations with the 
Divinity everywhere immanent in the universe. As it was viewed 
by Bernard of Clairvaux, Kempis, Eckhart, Tauler, Guyon, 
Fenelon, Behmcn, and all the Christian Mystics, the Divine com- 
munication, in this interior state, assumes the form of a philo- 
sophical necessity. The man, emptied of self and the world, and 
raised above the fallacious appearances of the senses, is infallibly 
filled with the Deity and with heavenly light and life in accord- 
ance with the old principle that "nature abhors a vacuum." Cer- 
tain it is, if we are freed from all that is repellant to the Divine 
Life and Light, and every thing is removed from the mind that is 
opaque to spiritual truth, and bars its ingress to the soul, we come 
into a state where our individual life is mingled with the Divine 
Existence, and our soul acts in harmony with the Over-Soul, like 
the sound of two musical strings vibrating in unison and flowing 
together in one concordant strain. This exaltation of the intel- 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 229 

lect and harmonizing of the disturbed emotional nature cannot but 
give a quickening influence to every department of our being, and 
God's " saving health " permeates and pervades the entire man. 

In tins more exhalted range of the mind's activity, communica- 
tion with the world of angelic life becomes its normal condition, 
and the soul goes to it as instinctively and naturally as the 
new-born animal to its native element. It is the dawn of immor- 
tality. The present conscious attainment of eternal life is one 
of the truths taught by Buddhism, but more clearly in the sub- 
lime spiritual utterances of Jesus the Christ. " To know God is 
eternal life." "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life, 
and shall never die." (Johnxvii: 3; xi: 26; iii : 15.) When 
we rise above the life of sense to the true life of the spirit we 
attain to immortality, and lay hold of eternal life. We come to the 
attainment of a resurrection this side the grave, for the anastasis, 
of which Jesus speaks, is not the resuscitation of a dead body 
in the graveyard, nor an ascent in space, but an ascent in the scale 
of life from a natural, sensuous existence to a spiritual mode of 
thinking, feeling, and perception. The resurrection is a state 
attainable in the present life. It is the liberation of our spiritual 
powers and faculties from their material thraldom. " The super- 
sensual world is no future world ; it is now present ; it can at no 
point of Unite ex'stence be more present than at another, nor more 
present after an existence of myriads of lives than at this 
moment." 

" It is not necessary that I should be first severed from the ter- 
restrial world before I can obtain admission into the celestial cne ; 
I am in it and live in it even now far more truly than in the ter- 
restrial ; even now it is my only sure foundation ; and the eternal 
life, on the possession of which I have already entered, is the only 
ground why I should prolong this terrestrial one. That which we 
call heaven docs not lie beyond the grave ; it is even here diffused 
around us, and its light arises in every pure heart." (Fichte's 
Vocation of Man, Popular Works, pp. 345, 340, 351.) 

That hea\en and eternal life are states of the soul to be 



230 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

unfolded here and now, and not to be reached by locomotion 
through space to some distant stillar orb in the material universe, 
and at some indefinite future time, is one of the plainest teachings 
of Jesus the Christ. According to him, immortality is already in 
man, and " the kingdom of the heavens is at hand," that is, within 
our present grasp. 

On this subject Schleiermacher says in the conclusion of his 
second Discourse on Religion : " The final aim of a religious life 
is not the immortality which many wish for and believe in, or only 
pretend to believe in, — not that beyond time, or rather after this 
time, but yet in time, — but the immortality which we can have 
immediate in this temporal life. In the midst of the finite to be 
one with the Infinite, and be eternal in every instant, — this is the 
immortality of religion." 

In this resurrection state, which Christianity makes attainable on 
earth, the soul is not dependent upon the bodily senses for its per« 
ceptions, but — 

"Like naked lamp, she is one shining sphere, 
And round about hath perfect cognizance — 
Whatever in her horizon doth appear ; 
She is one orb of sense,— all eye, all touch , all ear." 



CHAPTER Xni. 

BLESSEDNESS AND HEALTH, OR TO BE HAPPY IS TO BE WELL. 

Happiness, which may be defined as the satisfaction resulting 
from the harmonious gratification of all the powers and faculties of 
the soul, is a spiritual healthfulness, and, by a necessary law of 
cause and effect, this state of the mind will ultimate itself in the 
outside circumference of our being, or what we call the body. Its 
echo will be heard there and recorded in the physical organism. 
Fichte affirms that life is itself, and in itself, blessedness, — that the 
two cannot be distinguished, but merge into one. Happiness is 
an essential and inseparable property of all true life. Swedenborg 
more than a century ago gave utterance to one of the profoundest 
axioms of a spiritual science when he declared in his philosophical 
work, Divine Love and Wisdom, that life is love, — an idea which 
may be made evident to anyone who will give to it any earnest 
and patient thought and attention. Love is of itself a state of 
blessedness, — satisfaction with itself, joy in itself ; and therefore 
love and happiness are one and the same, and consequently all 
true life must be blessed, since life is love. Thus life, love, 
and blessedness, and, we may add, by necessary inference, health, 
are intimately connected, and are identical and always go together, 
so that one cannot exist without the others. All delight, or emo- 
tional bliss, arises from love, that is, from life. It is an ebullition 
and overflowing of vitality. The man who is not happy, who has 
not attained to blessedness, does not in reality live. He only 

231 



232 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

appears to live. His existence is only a seeming and not a Divine 
reality. It is an undesired, unwelcome, and unsatisfactory state, 
which is endured rather than enjoyed. His highest enjoyment is 
a negation of misery, which he attains only in sleep, the image of 
death. 

. A religion, whose central principle is fear, cannot make the soul 
happy, and does not bear the seal and impress of Divinity. God's 
infinite Life is love, and love is blessedness in itself. To con- 
sciously live in God, to share his Life, to be made one with Him, 
and thus be made a partaker of the Divine nature, is to live in 
the order of our creation, and to move in the element in which we 
were made to exist and to act, and out of which there is no real 
life and blessedness. Let it be remembered that happiness and 
health are most intimately, if not indissolubly, associated. The 
man who is happy, not by transient gleams of spiritual sunshine, 
not by a casual gay surface-coloring of his existence, but by a 
blessedness all through his being, is not, in the proper sense of the 
word, diseased. The radical idea of the term disease — without 
case — is inconsistent with this state. Let us remember that life, 
blessedness, and health are one. He who is not blessed, who is 
not happy, does not really live. He docs not realize the full idea 
of what we call life. The wheels of life move, if they move at 
all, with friction, and labor, and effort. All action in the line of 
du(y is an up-hill exertion, and not a spontaneous vivacity. 

An unhappy man cannot in the full sense of the word be a 
healthy man. Much of what physicians treat as physical disease 
is only a mental unhappiness. It follows from this that the 
best physician is he who blesses others, who makes other souls 
happy by the Divine sunshine of his words and presence. The 
sphere of his beneficent life is a contagious peacefulness and undis- 
turbed tranquility. He ministers to minds diseased, calms their 
fears, allays their anxieties, solves their doubts, quiets their fore- 
bodings, removes the gloom of dispair, supplants their self-condem- 
nation by a sense of pardon, and aims to pluck from the heart 
every rooted sorrow. Such was Jesus the Christ, who came to coin- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 233 

fort those that mourned, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of 
joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi- 
ness. The good physician is a doctor or teacher. His first 
inquiry is not what ails the body, but what are the more real and 
interior needs of the soul. By attending to the body alone, he 
would only work at the circumference of our being ; by giving his 
attention to the mental and spiritual state, he begins the curative 
process at the center of our existence, and, according to an estab- 
lished law of Divine order, works from within outward. The spir- 
itual disturbance, the mental abnormality, has priority in time, 
and is first in importance, for the reason that in the mind is found 
the cause of all bodily changes. We should then search for the 
spiritual symptoms first, and look at the tongue, feel the pulse, 
and examine the excretions afterwards. The divinest and most 
Christ-like man in human society is the good physician, — he who, 
from the overflowing stores of his spiritual intelligence and good- 
ness, is governed by an irrepressible impulse to impart life, health, 
and peace to others. He is God's messenger, God's prophet of 
good, an inspired herald to announce and inaugurate the good 
time coming to the sorrowing and suffering. He follows more 
closely in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ, the Divine Man, than 
does he who clothes himself with the spirit of an imaginary, priestly 
dignity to give his solemn sanction and official seal to a soul's sal- 
vation. 

God is supremely happy, because He is a boundless, changeless, 
irrepressible, and everlasting Love. But love is life, and love in 
us is the life of God in the soul of man. It is an exalted blessed- 
ness to lay the hand on the heart and feel it warm with the vital 
flame of heaven. But it is a supreme bliss of the soul to be the 
organ of its communication to others. We then become partakers 
of the Infinite tranquility, — the peace of God that passe th under- 
standing, — and the soul in unruffled serenity floats on the wave- 
less, stormless ocean of the immeasurable Life of God. 

The final end of man's creation was to share the bliss of God. 
Even our sorrows serve to fit us for this. 



234 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

"Here grief and joy so suddenly unite 
That anguish serves to sublimate delight." 

Our sorrows are usually only transient moods that are succeeded 
by heightened joys, as beneath the warming sun the vapors vanish 
and leave a lucid sky. 

"Catch rich, grand thoughts from fountains pure above, 
Then pour them out with thine own thoughts in love. 
Mark every place with flowers where thou hast trod, 
And let thy path lead always towards thy God." 

Hypochondria, which consists in melancholia, and the conse- 
quent dyspepsia accompanied with gloomy ideas of life, dejection 
of spirits, a loss of faith that blurrs the bright picture that hope 
paints on the canvass of the future, like clouds obscuring the glo- 
ries of sunrise, and all this accompanied by an indisposition to 
activity, is a more general characteristic of disease than physicians 
have recognized. For all this class of ailments, an hour of 
supreme bliss, or even the slightest taste of the soul's summum 
bonum, or highest good, is the specific remedy. Under its influ- 
ence, with a magical efficiency and Divine celerity, the bodily dis- 
ease vanishes and becomes a nihility or nothingness. It passes 
into the realm of oblivescence, or forgetfulness, and is annihilated 
by ceasing to be an object of thought. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRUE IDEA OF SIN, AND ITS RELATION TO DISEASE. 

There is a lurking suspicion in the human mind, and has been 
in all ages, that somehow disease is the result of sin. There are 
traditionary traces among most nations of a time when man was 
pure and holy, and was consequently free from disease, and life 
was greatly prolonged beyond its present term. This may have 
some foundation in historical fact, but is probably greatly colored 
by mythical additions. Yet it shows that there is in the mind of 
man an instinctive recognition of the principle that holiness and 
health, sin and disease, have an important relation to each other, 
even though they may not express the absolute connection of cause 
and effect. 

Christ, after the cure of disease, often said to the restored 
patient: "Go in peace, and sin no more." Here the causal rela- 
tion of sin to disease seems to be implied, if not directly stated. 
The same is implied in what he said to the paralytic : " Son, be of 
good cheer; thy sins are all forgiven thee," where the remission or 
removal of his sins is equivalent to the cure of his disease. 
According to Jesus the Christ, holiness — which, according to 
Swedenborg, expresses a right state of the intellect or the thoughts 
— is spiritual health; and disease, so far as it is an abnormal con- 
dition of the bodily organism, is only the externalization of an 
anterior mental or spiritual disturbance, or inharmony. Sin is a 
moral evil or disorder. It is a divergence from that mental order 

235 



236 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

which expresses the will of God in relation to man's well-being. It 
is in the mind before it can become an external act or outward 
condition, as was taught by the Christ; yet by an invariable law 
of correspondence it translates itself into an outward effect upon 
the body. Disease, then, as was affirmed by Swedenborg, and 
which is in harmony with the teaching of Jesus, is always an 
impure state because it corresponds to evil. It is the echo in the 
body of some form of spiritual disorder. Following the lead of 
Jesus in his dealings with it, we would not affirm by this that a 
sick man ought to be punished here or hereafter, but that he ought 
to be cleansed from his leprosy (which may lie deep within), and 
to be made whole or holy, — the two words having the same radi- 
cal or etymological meaning. 

Paul gives a comprehensive and general definition of sin as " a 
transgression of the law," by which he means, or ought to mean, to 
include something more than the Decalogue. It is a divergence 
from the spiritual and moral order of our being, which expresses to 
us the law of our nature and the will of God. In the metaphorical 
expression "transgression," or a crossing over, the law is sym- 
bolized as a straight line. To pass over it or diverge from it on 
either side is a sin. But unfortunately for most or all of us, we 
were born on the wrong side of it. By the law of heredity, which 
means the tendency in the mind and body of an individual to 
develop in the likeness of his progenitors, we inherit a predisposi- 
tion to many forms of evil. This is often nourished and strength- 
ened by what is called in philosophy our environment, by winch 
is meant the sum total of the physical and moral conditions and 
influences that surround us, — the ambient world of matter and 
spirit. In the present state of the world it is not strange that 
there are so many sick people and sinners. It would be a miracle 
if it were otherwise. I am fully persuaded that much of what 
is called acute disease and nine-tenths of all chronic disease is the 
result of an hereditary predisposition to it. We are born morally 
and spiritually out of joint. Tins is what Dr. Chalmers calls " the 
great unhingement" of human nature. But is there do deliver- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 237 

ance, no redemption for us ? Did Jesus the Christ introduce into 
this world of moral and spiritual darkness, disorder and disease, a 
plan of salvation, a method of cure for both soul and body? Can 
we be rescued from the effects of this hereditary taint, whether it 
be in the direction of theft or rheumatism, of eovetousness or con- 
sumption? If it is our misfortune not to have been born aright 
in our first start in life, can we, in any proper sense of the word, 
be born again ? Is there in every human being, however sinful 
or diseased, a hidden germ of a new and higher life that can, by 
a Divine spiritual and celestial influence, be, as it were, impreg- 
nated and developed into a new man ? Is this whole Christian 
doctrine of salvation a baseless phantom, or is there an underlying 
practicable truth in it ? I affirm that Christ, whose patronymic 
name was Jesus, or Joshua, which signifies a savior, or health- 
giver, was sent into the world to save his followers from sin, and 
thus redeem them from the spiritual seeds of disease. In the 
grand system of cure which he inaugurated, spiritual truths and 
influences are the restorative and healing agencies. In his Divine 
therapeutics faith is of more value than pharmacy, contrition than 
cathartics, and instruction is shown to be more efficacious than 
ipecac. In his hands this spiritual system of medicine was ade- 
quate to the cure of the worst forms of bodily malady. Before 
the power of the Word and the Spirit, which found in him a will- 
ing instrument and organ of communication, all disorderly spirit- 
ual influences fled, and disease and death retired. I dare not affirm 
that his life was a succession of miracles, in the ordinary sense of 
the word, as a departure from the laws of nature, but we should 
recognize in his beneficent career the knowledge of a higher order 
within the realm of nature. Miracles, as even Prof. Phelps in his 
work on the New Birth has acknowledged, are not the grandest 
disclosures of Omnipotence. (New Birth, p. 26.) The means 
by which the curative results recorded in the Gospels were effected 
by the Christ are still available. They belong to the very essence 
of Christianity and to the established law of the relation of the 
soul to its bodily manifestation, and are not mere transient devices. 



238 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

The same system of treatment and method of cure can today save 
to the uttermost our disordered human nature — soul, spirit, and 
body — for time and eternity. 

It is an idea deeply imbedded in the religious consciousness of 
the world, as I have before said, that disease is the effect of sin. 
This instinctive or intuitive truth seems to have been incorporated 
into the system of Jesus the Christ. In saving men from their 
sins, he delivered them from disease. But it is a question of great 
importance — what was the idea of sin as it existed in the mind of 
Jesus ? We must lay aside all theological definitions and go to 
the language in which the New Testament was written, or in which 
it comes to us. The word used by Jesus to express the idea of 
sin is uucaqtIu (hamartia). The first, and consequently radical, 
meaning of this word is given by Robinson in his Greek Lexicon 
of the New Testament as an aberration from the truth, an error. 
It is a word borrowed from archery where the arrow does not hit 
the mark. In John viii : 46, it is used in opposition to ^ aXr/dela, 
the truth. Donnegan defines it a mistake, a mistaking. This 
shows that the natural remedy for it is truth, a spiritual intelli- 
gence. Prof. Austin Phelps, in his work on the New Birth, which 
is intensely orthodox, affirms that truth is the instrument of regen- 
eration, and that truth is a spiritual power, in accordance with the 
passages of Scripture which he quotes, — " Of his own will begat 
He us with the word of truth," and " The law of the Lord is per- 
fect, converting the soul." He might have quoted with greater 
effect the words of the Christ, where he intensifies truth as a sana- 
tive and saving power, when he prays for his disciples : " Sanctify 
them through thy truth." 

Sin as the cause of disease is an error, a wrong way of think- 
ing, feeling, and acting. It is a great aberration from the truth 
to suppose that the body has life in itself, that disease, properly 
so called, is in the physical organism, or that the condition of the 
body is ever anything but an effect of which the mind is the cause. 
Christ came to convince the world of this sin, — this grave mis- 
take. (John xvi : 8, 9.) He came to make known the truth on 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 239 

this subject, and to demonstrate its efficiency as a curative and 
saving agency. It was his grand remedy, a panacea for human 
ills. He demonstrated, as no one had ever done, the medical 
value of an idea, the healing power of spiritual truth, the sanative 
virtue of instruction, and its ability to overcome the error, the mis- 
take, the sin, that was the root of disease. He left behind him a 
system of cure which the world has been slow to understand, and 
too dull to comprehend, and it has gradually dropped out of the 
life of the Church, being overlaid and smothered by an external 
ecclesiasticism. But a future spiritual science of health and dis- 
ease will restore it to the world. Truth, like Milton's angels, is 
immortal in every part, and cannot die. In Christ's miracles, or 
marvels of healing, there is no infraction of the laws of nature ; 
we only witness the predominance of a higher over a lower law, 
— of spirit over matter, of the mind over the body, — but all in 
the domain of what we call nature. This we often witness. 
When I raise my arm, a spiritual law or force neutralizes or over- 
comes the law of gravitation. The lower yields to the higher. 
This is a miracle. So those chemical laws or forces that induce 
decomposition in animal substances are continually overpowered 
and held in check by that spiritual something which is called in 
physiology the vis vitce, the vital force, which is only another name 
for the unconscious action of mind. It is one of the highest laws 
of nature that the physical, the material, should be under subjec- 
tion to the spiritual and controlled by it. This is illustrated in 
the life of Jesus the Christ. 

The Saxon word sin or syn, in its primary or radical sense, 
means the same as the Latin-English word error, a wandering. 
In the Confession of the Church-of-England Liturgy, "We have 
erred and strayed from thy commandments," we have the exact 
signification of the word. The Latin peccatum, a mistake, a blun- 
der, has the same signification as the English word sin, and the 
Greek term (d^a^r/u) used by the Christ. The fundamental 
idea of sin in most, if not all, languages is that of an error, or 
mistake, an aberration from the truth. It is the result of igno- 



240 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

ranee. Any other meaning attached to the word is a sort of theo- 
logical veneering that is put over the word, and that does not 
belong to it by Divine right. Many of the terms used in religious 
parlance have had other meanings pasted over them besides the 
true one. These must be removed in order to get at the Divine 
idea. In the Scriptural sense of the term, sin is a want of knowl- 
edge. It is the result of ignorance. The remedy for it is truth, 
or knowledge in its reality. Prof. Ferrier, in his Institutes of 
Metaphysics, has established a consoling doctrine in regard to it. 
In the second part of his work, entitled Agnoiology, or the Theory 
of Ignorance, which is a novelty in philosophy, he has demon- 
strated that we can be ignorant only of that which can be known. 
For instance, we cannot be ignorant that two and two are five, or 
that a circle is a square. He affirms that we can be ignorant only 
of what can be possibly known, or, in other words, there can be an 
ignorance only of that of which there can be a knowledge. Conse- 
quently all ignorance (and, by inference, all sin) is remedable. 
(Institutes of Metaphysics, pp. 410-412.) 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE NATURE OF REGENERATION AND IT3 INFLUENCE UPON THE 
BODILY STATE. 

I use the word regeneration not because it is a scriptural one, — 
for the term never occurs but once in the Gospels (Mat. xix: 
28) , and then it is not used in the sense given to it in theology, — 
but because it is a term in common use in religious literature to 
express the idea of a certain spiritual metamorphosis, or mental 
transformation, from a lower to a higher condition of life. There 
is a vast amount of mystery thrown around the subject of regen- 
eration which does not rightly belong to it. If it be a radical 
change in the mental or spiritual status of an iu dividual, it may 
be clearly defined to the consciousness, and intelligibly described, 
so that he who seeks it may know for what he is searching and striv- 
ing to attain. To seek for a regenerative state of our powers is 
not or ought not to be like a process of algebra where we aim to 
find the value of an unknown quantity. 

As our natural or first birth is an introduction into the natural 
life, and into a mere sensuous range of thinking and feeling, so tc 
be "born from above" marks the incipiency of the spiritual life. 
All progress beyond this is a spiritual growth, and not a new 
birth. Regeneration is the commencement of that higher mode of 
thinking and feeling which we call spiritual. To think spiritually 
is to think independently of the testimony and fallacious appear- 
ances of the senses. It is to rise out of the trammels of a mere 

241 



242 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

sense-bound existence, and to discern truth in its reality. To feel 
spiritually is to be elevated above the region of a mere sensuous 
selfishness, into which we are all born, and to act from the love of 
others, — the love of the neighbor. 

It is a question of much importance whether the state of our 
powers, which we call regeneration, or to use the expression that 
has the sanction of the Christ, being "born from above," is not an 
orderly development, a natural evolution, from the condition in 
which we first enter upon life. Under the proper conditions, all 
souls come to be regenerated. A seed may remain long without 
germinating, but when subjected to the proper influences of heat 
and moisture it springs into life at once. Is regeneration effected 
by a miraculous interposition, or does it not enter into the Divine 
plan of creation? Is it not as natural as the unfoldment of the 
bud into the flower, or the development of childhood into mature 
manhood? When I affirm that it is a natural and orderly evolu- 
tion I do not exclude a Divine power and causation from it, for 
God is immanent in nature and the laws of the human mind. I 
mean only that he has established and maintained the order 
expressed by Paul, that that which is spiritual is not first in the 
development of man, but that which is natural, or on a material 
plane of thought; afterwards comes that which is spiritual. 
(1 Cor. xv : 46.) It seems to me that to regenerate or spiritiir 
alize the nature of man, or to raise the soul from a sensuous way 
of thinking and a selfish mode of feeling and acting, enters not 
only into the plan of creation but is the constant aim of God's 
providential dealings with us. 

Every human being has within him the germ of a truly spiritual 
life, although it may now be overlaid with a deep covering of 
externality. These spiritual powers may exist only potentially, 
like the oak in the acorn, or they may be dormant or latent, yet 
they are capable of being so unfolded as to be the predominant 
power in our life here and hereafter. Progression upward from a 
state of sensual selfishness, and the bondage of the intellect to the 
lower and sensuous range of its action, is in its nature an evolu- 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 243 

tion. It is not progression onward in an uninterrupted straight 
line, but an ascent to a higher stage of life, — another plane of 
conscious existence. Hence, it is called* a new birth, a being 
"bom [or borne] from above." It is being born of the spirit, 
that is, our spiritual powers are emancipated from their latent 
state, analogous to what takes place in our natural powers at our 
first birth. 

But that with which we are more particularly concerned is the 
question, How does this affect the bodily condition, the physical 
status of the individual ? The soul being the organizing principle 
of the body, and that which imparts to the external organism its 
only vital force, — for the body without the spirit is dead (James 
ii: 20), — it always impresses its own inner changes by its inher- 
ent, plastic power upon the body, which is its outward expression. 
If the body has no life of itself, but is only an effect, the cause of 
which is found in the mind, then the new order or state of mental 
life which is called regeneration ought to record itself in some 
corresponding change of the outward organism. It must be trans- 
lated into a bodily expression, as all spiritual states seek an 
external manifestation. According to the laws of Divine order, a 
genuine spiritual life is outwardly expressed by what is called in 
the New Testament, and in the language of the Christ, wholeness 
or health. 

After twenty-five years' practice as a physician, I am satisfied 
that much of what goes under the name of chronic disease, espe- 
cially of a nervous type, has its root in selfishness, — at least, a 
purely unselfish man or woman, with the consequent tranquil hap- 
piness. I never saw who was a nervous invalid. Such a state is 
usually the result of an over-estimate of their own importance and 
value in the universe, and a desire to make every one contribute 
to them, instead of sacrificing themselves to others, according to 
the Christ-principle. The best prescription for such persons is in 
the words of Jesus: "Give, and it shall be given." To love 
something outside, or beside, ourselves, and to be actuated by an 
irrepressible desire to be of use, — to do good to others, — gives a 



244 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

strength and tenacity of life that in some cases seems to border on 
the miraculous. I have known some persons whose ruling passion 
was to do good who have carried with them through many years 
an amount of suffering that would have crushed out prematurely 
many a less unselfish life. In their case their diseased condition 
did not subtract a single unit from " the days of the years of their 
life." He who consecrates himself to the good of universal being, 
and thus becomes an organ of communication between the Divine 
Love and human needs, is immortal until his work is done. If 
God's life is love, and all life is from Him, then he who loves 
the most really exhibits the highest degree of life, and God's eter- 
nity contributes to his longevity. 

It is to be remarked that regeneration, or the being born, or 
borne, from above, is not a constitutional change, that is, it creates 
no new powers or faculties in the human soul. All that it can do 
is to take the man as he is, and regulate and direct the powers 
that he receives and possesses as an hereditary inheritance. No 
new citation is possible or is needed, as there is no faculty of the 
soul that is wrong per se, or in itself, but only in its activity in a 
wrong direction. The legitimate use of all our powers, and of every 
native instinct, sentiment, and faculty, is in accordance with the 
will of God, and is to us the law of health and of God. Every 
man has in himself the germ of a true spiritual life. With- 
out this he would not be a man, but only an animal. Leibnitz 
introduced into German philosophy, where it has ever remained, 
the doctrine of unconscious intelligence, or latent thought. This 
hint was taken up by Sir William Hamilton, as before remarked, 
and has been unfolded by other writers into the now accepted 
doctrine of preconscious mental action. This has been pushed by 
the philosophical systems of Schopenhaur and Von Hartmann to 
an extent that borders on atheism. We may carry the idea of 
Leibnitz a step further than he did, and assert that there are in 
human nature latent and dormant spiritual feelings that, by the 
vivifying touch of a spiritual influence and instruction, may be 
awakened into conscious activity. This is what regeneration does 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 245 

for us. It erects a new superstructure on the old foundation, or 
rather it emancipates the spiritual manhood from its chrysalis 
state. Many of the higher and diviner powers of our nature exist 
potentially rather than in actu, and must be evolved from their 
occult and inactive state. 

In the philosophy of Swedenborg he introduces an important 
distinction between reformation and regeneration, based on his 
doctrine that the intellect is the form of the love. Reformation 
is of the understanding ; regeneration is a state of the will, under 
which term he includes the whole affectional and emotional nat- 
ure. As long as anyone sees and acknowledges in his mind that 
evil is evil and good is good, and thinks that good is to be chosen, 
so long that state is called reformation, or rather re-formation. It 
is only an intellectual theory, an outside form, an external shell of 
an inward life, and one not adopted by the affections, that is, incor- 
porated into the life. But when he wills to shun evil and do good, 
which implies a desire and volitional striving, the state of regen- 
eration begins. It is to be feared that much that passes current in 
the religious world for the new birth goes no further than an 
intellectual reformation. It is a theory of duty, a mere intellectual 
system of ethics, rather than a being bom from above, or a 
being borne upward to a higher plane of spiritual life. ( True 
Christian Religion, 587.) 

On the relation of the soul and body Swedenborg is clear and 
explicit, and greatly in advance of the age in which he lived. 
According to him, the body is not the real man, but is perpetu- 
ally derived from the soul; all the things in it are appendages of 
the soul, and receive from it life and motion, for the body does 
not act of itself, but from the spirit; it is the form or external 
boundary of the spirit, and that by means of which the soul enters 
into time and space. (True Christian Religion, 103, 224, 156.) 
The word form is derived from the Greek ogafia, and means 
that which is seen. When we say that the body is the form of 
the soul, we express the idea that the physical organism is the soul 
made visible. The matter of which the body is composed is in 



246 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

itself dead and inert, yet the connection between the soul and its 
outward form or manifestation is such that a mental state trans- 
lates itself into a bodily expression, and sometimes with instanta- 
neous celerity, as, for instance, in a sudden fright, or the blush that 
attends a feeling of shame. Hence, regeneration, or a change 
from a mere natural to a spiritual mode of thinking and feeling, 
must effect a modi6cation of the bodily condition. The new spirit, 
as Swedenborg teaches, makes for itself a new body, or external 
form. It not only translates itself into new modes of external 
activity, but renews the body itself as the passive instrument of 
the changed interior state. The reformed inebriate, the sensualist, 
or the glutton soon holes like another person. As my friend 
Rev. E. H. Sears, in his valuable work on Regeneration, has said, 
"It is spirit that appropriates matter, and makes it fiexile to its 
uses." The immortal soul-principle gives to the body all its life 
and power. It is the vital, formative, organizing, and governing 
principle in the organic material. Hence, the fact so often brought 
to our notice in the Gospel narratives, that the conversion of the soul 
and the cure of disease went together in the practice of the Christ, 
so that the new spiritual state might have a solid basis of physical 
health on which to permanently rest. The changed soul makes 
for itself a new bodily condition, or outward expression, in har- 
mony with its altered spiritual status. This is no more a miracle 
than it is when the emotion of fear or the feeling of melancholy, 
or the sense of guilt and shame, record themselves in the face. 
In fact, the science of physiognomy of Lavater, and of Dr. Gall's 
phrenology, are based on this relation of the soul to its body. 
The renewal of the body by regeneration is effected in accord- 
ance with the same law, and by some force far different from that 
which is the producing cause in all mere chemical changes and 
phenomena. It is the result of a spiritual chemistry, a mental 
dynamic force, certain in its action, but poorly understood. 

To effect a renewal of the body by regeneration, or an elevation 
of the soul from a material to a spiritual range of thought and 
feeling, requires no more time, and not so much, than intervenes 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 247 

between our conception in the womb and our birtb. In fact, during 
a period of nine months, the corporeal organism could be made over 
anew more than once. But the disciple of Grail will confront me 
with the question, Will the organs in the brain of the mental facul- 
ties be altered in size ? Meeting him on his own ground, I answer : 
As none of them are wrong in themselves, they do not so much 
need to be annihilated, or changed in size, as to be changed in 
their mode of action. I should not expect that a pugilist or cham- 
pion prize-fighter, if regenerated, would exhibit a diminution in the 
size of his hands and arms, or in the strength of his muscular 
system, but only that he would put them to a better use. If the 
soul is borne, or impelled, from above, it will elevate the body to 
a higher plane of life, and a diviner form of activity. 

" We must be here to work; 
And men who work can only work for men, 
And, not to work in vain, must comprehend 
Humanity, and so work humanly, 
And raise men's bodies still by raising souls, 
As God did first." Mas. BBOWxnro. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE CREATIVE POWER OF THOUGHT, OR HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY 
AS A MEDICINE. 

It is a doctrine clearly taught in the Scriptures, especially in 
the first chapter of the Johannean Gospel, that the world was cre- 
ated by the Logos, or the Divine Thought. (John i : 3.) It is 
also certain that it is revealed only to thought. What we call 
sensation arises from within, though at first glance it might seem 
otherwise. Before we have a perception of an external object, 
we have an antecedent thought or image of it, without which the 
sensation could not exist. The eyes may be open, and directed 
towards an object, and yet we do not see it, unless the attention, 
that is, the thought, is fixed upon it. Without this the world 
would be to us a blank, an empty void. Ideas may exist ante- 
cedently to thought, as these are the thoughts of the Divine Mind. 
Hegel, the philosopher par excellence of Germany, says : " We 
have mental pictures of objects before we think them: and it 
is only through these mental pictures, and by having constant 
recourse to them, that the mind goes on to know and comprehend in 
the strict meaning of thought." (HegeVs Logic, Introduction, 
p. 1.) The prevalent materialistic systems of philosophy affirm 
that thought arises from sensation, and is suggested by it. But 
this is only an apparent truth. The Idealists teach that no rensa- 
tion, whether of sight, hearing, feeling, taste, or smell is possible 
except it is preceded or accompanied by thought. On this mo- 

248 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURB 219 

jeot Fichte observes : " The whole outward sense, and all ita 
objects, are founded upon universal thought, and a sensible per- 
ception is possible only in thought, and as something thought, as 
a determination of the general consciousness, but by no means 
in itself and separate from consciousness." (Popular Works, 
p. 423.) Even Sir William Hamilton affirms the same when he 
lays it down as a fundamental truth that without attention there 
is no consciousness ; and that attention is to consciousness what 
the contraction of the pupil is to the eye. (Lectures on Metaphys- 
ics, p. 172.) It was the fundamental idea of Scheliing's philoso- 
phy that the subject and object are identical, or, in other words, 
that the thought of a thing and the thing itself are not distinguish- 
able, but are in their inmost reality one and the same, and can 
never be separated. 

Hegel has unfolded the doctrine of John into a systematic state- 
ment. His Logic (a word derived from Logos) may properly 
be characterized as the philosophy of thought. To him, as Ster- 
ling in his Secret of Hegel has said, " Whatever is is thought." 
In his system thought is the inwardness, or as it were the kernel, 
of the world. This is only another way of expressing the doctrine 
of Berkeley. Hegel calls nature the system of unconscious thought, 
or, to use the expression of Schelling, a fossilized intelligence. 
Thought forms the indwelling nature or substance of external 
things. It is also the universal substance, the groundwork, of all 
that is spiritual. In all human perception thought is present ; 
so thought is the universal in all acts of conception and recollec- 
tion, — in short, in every mental activity, in willing, wishing, and 
the like. All these faculties are only additional specifications of 
thought. When it is presented in this light, thought has a differ- 
ent part to play from what it has when we speak of a faculty of 
thought, one among a crowd of other faculties, such as conception, 
perception, and will, with which it stands on the same level. When 
it is seen to be the true universal of all that nature and mind con- 
tain, it extends so as to embrace all these faculties and becomes 
the basis of everything. (Hegel's Logic, by William Wallace, 
pp. 38, 39.) 



2-50 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

This is the " Secret of Hegel," to possess which, according to his 
disciples, was to hold the key to the profoundest knowledge, and 
have the means of the highest happiness. It takes us to the Ultima 
Thule, the utmost boundary of all that the mind can know. In 
his system thought is not a mere mental faculty ; it is the very 
substance, the basis, of the mind, and that which is universally 
present in every mental act and state. To think is a necessary 
condition of our existence, and of the existence, or, at least, the 
manifestation to our consciousness of everything in the universe. 
To cease thinking is all the same as a termination of our indi- 
vidual existence. It is a suspension of our being. It is equiva- 
lent to an annihilation both of ourselves and of everything else, or, 
as the German philosophy would express it, the ego and the non- 
ego. Thoughts are things. This is evident from language. 
Thing is but another form of think. The words are the same at 
the root. A thing is that which has existence to our minds by 
being the object of thought. In their inmost reality, things are 
objective thoughts. Creation, or what we call nature, is a perma- 
nent manifestation of the thoughts of God, and we perceive an 
outward world only so far as we think in concert with Him. All 
that we know of a tree or a flower, or can think of them, measures 
the extent of our vision of them As one has said : " In the world 
of man and nature we have simply to do with the thought of God. 
We cannot suppose that God made the world as a carpenter does 
a house. It is sufficient that God think the world." {Sterling's 
Secret of Hegel, p. 83.) Hence, the universe is an expression, a 
manifestation, an ultimation of the ideas of the Divine Mind. As 
we live in God, so we think in and from Him. " We are not suf- 
ficient of ourselves to think anythiug as of ourselves ; but our 
sufficiency is of God." (2 Cor. iii : 5.) Hegel's doctrine is not 
pantheism but more properly panlogism, or that which is taught 
by John, the intimate disciple of the Christ, that all things are 
created by the Logos, which means the Divine Thought. Thought 
is the groundwork of all reality. It is that universal principle that 
anderlies all existence. Take away the thought of a thing, and 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 251 

it is to us annihilated. It becomes as nothing. It is a funda- 
mental and intuitive truth that what is out of thought is to us out 
of existence. When we do not think of a thing, it is all the same 
as if it were not. This is as self-evidently certain as any of the 
axioms of geometry. Existence is manifested being, and an entity 
of which we have no conception, no idea, no thought, neither has 
nor can have any existence to us for the time being. When we 
think of it, we again, as it were, create it or give it reality. If 
there were no mind to perceive, as Berkeley maintained, there 
would be no universe, for all things are created by and revealed 
only to thought. Forgetfulness of a thing, a putting it out of 
mind, a banishing it from thought, is to us its annihilation. If it 
has being, it has no ex-istence, or standing out, as the word signi- 
fies. The celebrated philosopher Immanuel Kant was able by the 
strength of thought to forget the pains of gout. It required, he 
says, a great mental effort, but never failed to afford relief. When 
John affirms of the Logos that all things were made by it, and 
without it was not anything made that was made (John i: 3), 
he means that thought is the active principle of creation, for a 
word, Divine or human, is in its essence only a thought. 

Is the philosophy of Hegel of any practical value ? Can it be 
made available in constructing an efficient system of phrenopathy, 
or mental-cure ? Spirit is the substance or underlying reality of 
matter, and thought is the creative power of the mind. We have 
shown in a preceding chapter that all we know, or can know, of 
a material world and of the human body is in ourselves. Their 
externeity is only apparent, not real. The same is equally true of 
disease. Taking thought, as was done by Descartes, to be all that 
of which we are conscious, we may safely afSrm that disease is 
only in the mind, that is, in our thought. One thing is certain, 
being confirmed by our experience, that a pain, if it is not thought 
9f , is not felt. It is thus made a nihility, a nothingness. For we 
repeat, that which is not in thought has to us no existence. 
When we think of it, it passes from nothing to something, for it is 
only by this that it comes to have any reality to us. Disease 



252 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

without this would Ibe as nothing, for it is only a wrong way of 
thinking, or, if you prefer it, a false belief. Banish it from 
thought and it no longer exists. Just to the extent in which this 
is done it is annihilated. As long as this is done the mind tri- 
umphs over it, and it is cured. Here is the grand remedy, the 
long-sought panacea. It is a fundamental principle in the phre- 
nopathic method of cure. Grasp the idea in all its fullness, and 
you have a remedy as certain as anything can be, — an infallible 
and universal specific. 

On the effect of thought upon sensation Dr. Carpenter remarks : 
" The acuteness with which particular sensations are felt is influ- 
enced in a remarkable degree by the attention they receive from 
the mind. If the mind be entirely inactive, as in profound sleep, 
no sensation whatever is produced by ordinary impressions; and 
the same is the case when the attention is so completely concen- 
trated upon some object of thought or contemplation that sensa- 
tions altogether unconnected with it fail to make any impression 
upon the perceptive consciousness. On the other hand, when the 
attention from any cause is strongly directed upon them, impres- 
sions, very feeble in themselves, produce sensations of even pain- 
ful acuteness; thus every one knows how much a slight itching of 
some part of the surface may be magnified by the direction of the 
thoughts to it, whilst, as soon as they are forced by some stronger 
impression into another channel, the irritation is no longer felt." 
(Principles of Human Physiology, p. 855.) 

The most important inquiry in relation to this phrenopathic 
mode olcure remains to be considered. How can we get disease 
out of our thought ? If this cannot be done, the system, although 
theoretically true, is of no practical value. It is said, in objection 
to the view given above, that as long as one feels a pain he can- 
not avoid thinking of it. There is a show of truth in this asser- 
tion. But it is equally certain that as long as we think of it we 
shall feel it ; and if by any means we can get our thoughts away 
from it, so that it is utterly out of thought, we no longer feel it. 
Here is a contest between feeling and thought. Which has the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 253 

right of dominion? Which one shall govern and control the 
other? It is a well-established principle in mental science that 
our thoughts are under the control of our volitions, but the feel- 
ings and emotions are not so. There is a self- determining power 
of thought, which we call free will. We can change the direction 
of our thoughts as readily as a sailor can alter the course of his 
vessel by varying the position of the helm. But in the mind the 
department of the feelings lies beyond the direct action of the will. 
These cannot be changed or suppressed by any direct volitional 
effort, but only mediately through the thoughts. If I am in pain, 
or unhappy, or diseased, it is possible for me, at least, to think of 
something else, and in proportion as this is done relief is gained. 
Invalids are often recommended to travel, and they gain great 
advantage to themselves by so doing, because, by seeing and 
thinking of so many other things, the attention is diverted from 
themselves. But why should this have any therapeutic value if 
their thoughts have nothing to do with the inception and progress 
of their malady ? In proportion as their disease and their trouble 
are out of thought they become non-existent. A chronic., dis- 
ease being a fixedness of thought, a morbid steadfastness of a 
false idea, in this condition a new idea, a radical change in the 
mode of thinking has great remedial efficacy. It may fall as 
silently upon tho soul of the sufferer as the dew upon a fading 
flower, but has the vivifying power of the archangel's trump to 
raise the dead, for ideas are the only things that really live. 

It may be considered as an established principle, a demon- 
strated truth, that we can change the direction of our thoughts. 
We can think of something besides the pain or the disease. This, 
if not a cure, is a relief. But we can go a step further than this, 
and institute a line of thought that runs counter to the disease, 
and will neutralize it with as much scientific certainty as an acid 
coming in contact with an alkali will change it to something else. 
Some of the most deadly poisons can be rendered harmless by the 
chemical action of an antidote. They are commuted at once into 
an innoxious substance, a harmless compound. So it comes within 



254 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

the compass of the powers of our minds when in pain and disease 
to think that we shall recover. Such a thing is manifestly con- 
ceivable. We can think this as easily as we can say it; for we 
could not say it even as a repetition of the words of another 
unless it was first a thought in the mind. We can also think that 
we now are getting well, that a cure is inaugurated, and that the 
pain, or the disease, or the unhappiness, is passing away. It is 
quite possible and practicable to think this, and if we continue 
this quasi-belief, we shall soon in a degree begin to feel it, and it 
becomes so far a reality, for it is only thought that gives a real 
existence to anything in the universe. The feeling added to the 
thought makes it an act of faith. For faith is not a mere intel- 
lectual belief, but a feeling that a thing is true, and thus, accord- 
ing to Paul, it becomes the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence, the convincing proof, of things not seen. (Heb. xi: 1.) 
All the operations or modifications of mind are reducible to 
thought and feeling. Thought and feeling are the essence of the 
soul, and the sum and substance of all mental activity and soul- 
life. They include and bound our very existence. Without them 
we should be as nothing. If I subtract them from what I call 
myself, my individual being, there is no remainder. When these 
are arrayed against disease, my very being is in antagonism to it, 
and the malady is withered at the root. Here is the antidote to 
that abnormality of mind, that morbid thinking, that is the cause 
of disease. 

If our mental force has become weakened, and the mind has 
become fixed in its action in a wrong direction, and in our unaided 
strength we are not adequate to the instituting of the proper line 
of thought and feeling, we may receive help from others. Here is 
the highest office, the divinest function of the physician. Unless 
ne can by some means inaugurate a new mode of thinking and 
feeling, with which the disease cannot coexist, he is of no use. 
Faith makes us whole now as it did in the days of Jesus the 
Christ, for the reason that it is inconsistent with the mental state 
that underlies the disease and supplants it. It is a spiritual medi- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 255 

cine, having the nature of an infallible antidote. It is a new 
mode of thinking and feeling that comes in to overpower the mor- 
bid mental state, which is the original cause of the malady. The 
influence of thought in the inception of disease, and in its cure, is 
unconsciously and instinctively recognized in common parlance. 
It is often said of an invalid that he is well if he only thought so, 
and after recovery the remark is frequently made that he could 
have recovered sooner if he had sooner come to think so. This is 
true, though its expression is often tainted with a lack of charity. 
To change the morbid thinking is precisely where the difficulty in 
the cure lies. 

He who would assist the invalid to rise out of that material 
range of thought and sense-bound state of mind that are the 
ground of the disease must not address himself or his remedies 
merely to the body of the patient, for that is adding weight to the 
mill-stone that is already drawing him down. He must be taught 
to forget the body and become spirit. The body is, in itself, life- 
less, motionless, and sensationless. It has neither thought, intelli- 
gence, nor feeling. All these are in the soul. To perceive this 
is a long step towards recovery. What we call the physical organ- 
ism is the most unreal part of human nature. This must become 
to us an ineffaceable conviction, and be so inwrought into our very 
being as to change our mode of thinking, feeling, speaking, and 
acting. In addressing the invalid, the body should be ignored, 
and we should speak as a soul, and from the soul, to the soul of 
the patient or sufferer. We then speak from the Divine realm of 
causation, and have a power over disease that cannot be gained by 
occupying any other standing ground. The man who is bound 
with the iron fetters of sense, and is in the underground dungeon 
of materialism, can afford but small aid to another in the same 
condition with himself. To possess the divinely-ordained power 
of mind over matter, and of soul over body, he must be himself 
unshackled and born into the true liberty of the spirit. He must 
be elevated above that range of thought and plane of cognition 
that are limited to a mere sensuous seeming and the appearance 



256 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

of truth to the discernment of the spiritual reality of things. 
Much that passes current for science is only the semblance of 
truth, and not a spiritual intelligence. This is a Divine healing 
force, — the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. 
It constitutes in us a point of attachment between the soul and 
the creative Thought, and repairs the broken link which has dis- 
joined us from God. The utterances of such a person will be the 
echo of God's ideas, and have the authority of Divine oracles. 
His mind vibrates in harmony with the Infinite Mind, and his 
thoughts become one with the Power that created and upholds the 
world, and is perpetually exhibited in nature's laws. 

The spiritual physician, or he who heals the body by touching 
the springs of life in the soul of the patient, should speak mid act 
from the Divine realm of his being, as did Jesus the Christ. 
" The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the 
Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." (John xiv: 
10.) Man is the highest manifestation of God in the universe. 
In a broader and more comprehensive sense than the Church has 
ever recognized, God is manifested in the flesh. (Eph. iii: 1G.) 
We have being in Him ; He has existence in us. Paul affirms 
that what may be known of God is manifested in man (Horn, i : 
19), which implies that outside of ourselves we have, and can 
have, no knowledge of God. To find God there, and identify our 
life with His Life, is to be invested with a power over disease like 
that which was exhibited by the Christ. The same language might 
be used in relation to the Christ. What is meant by that term in 
the Christian system is not the Jesus of history, the mere son of 
Joseph and Mary, who has ever been the object of worship in the 
Christian Church. This has been the great mistake of the relig- 
ious world. The real Christ is to be sought within, where alone 
he can be found. He represents and personifies the principle of 
spiritual life and intelligence, and is identical with it. In har- 
mony with this view, Paul speaks of the sublime mystery, or 
arcane doctrine, of Christianity as being that of " Christ in you, 
ihe hope of glory." (Col. i: 27.) And, in the deepest prayer 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 257 

ever uttered by the lips of man, Jesus as the Christ says of his dis- 
ciples or scholars of every age, "I in them, and Thou in me, that 
they may be made perfect [or complete] in one." (John xvii : 
20.) For, as a principle of spiritual intelligence, his life may be 
mingled and blended with ours into a unity. Of this Paul 
speaks when he says: "It is no more I that live, but Christ liveth 
in me." (Gal. ii: 20.) In this state of the soul, the powers of 
the individual man, the personal Ego, become augmented and 
re-enforced, like the addition of an ocean to a drop of water. In 
union with the Christ, when thus viewed, we come into a fellow- 
ship or community of life with the collective man, — the maximus 
homo, — and with all the fullness of the God-head, and "are com* 
plete in Him who is the head of all principality and power." 
(Col. ii: 9,10.) 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THEOPATHY AND PHRENOPATHY, OR THE UNION .OP THE DIVINE 
AND HUMAN IN THE CURE OP DISEASE. 

The doctrine of a vis medicatrix cogitationis, a healing power 
of thought, discussed in the preceding chapter, is based on the 
Hegelian principle that thought is a creative force. The funda- 
mental idea of Hegel's philosophy is that everything in its last 
analysis, or when we come to its inmost reality, is only a thought. 
What we call the external world and the human body, which is a 
part of it, are the thought of God, and we come to know them only 
so far as we think of them. They are revealed to us by the same 
power that creates them. Disease, like every other thing, is 
created, or, at least, has an existence only by thought. In the 
phrenopathic method of cure, it is a fundamental principle that 
thought is the ground of all reality. The words real and reality 
come from the Latin res, which is an exact equivalent of our word 
thing, and means that which is an object of thought. This is 
recognized in the Hebrew, where the term for word means also 
thing, as a word is only an expressed thought. That which is out 
of thought has to us no conscious existence, for consciousness is 
only a mode of thought. A thing, a world, a disease, comes into 
our consciousness only when we think of it. To be unconscious of 
a thing is all the same as if it were not. To bring disease into 
the realm of unconsciousness is to make it unreal, or, in other 
words, to cure it, for to be diseased and not know it, or think of it, 
or be conscious of it, is equivalent to being without disease. 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 250 

In disease we feel weak. This is implied by the terms that are 
used to express it in all languages. All maladies are called 
infirmities, or weaknesses. The same want of force or vigor is 
implied when we call the sick person an invalid (from in, not, 
and validus, strong). Feebleness is a fundamental idea of a dis- 
eased condition, and the woman healed by Jesus is a representa- 
tive of this aspect of disease. She was " bowed down with a spirit 
of infirmity for eighteen years," where we do well to mark the 
Hebraism in the use of a genitive for an adjective. An infirm 
spirit was the root of the malady. In this enfeebled state of the 
will and of the power of thought to enter into a combat with dis- 
ease in our unassisted strength seems like an effort to lift a mount- 
ain from its base. Is there any help that is always available and 
effectual ? Can wo come into union with the everywhere-present 
Power that creates and governs the universe, and join our weak- 
ness to the Divine Omnipotence in our curative effort ? There is 
in our nature a psychometrical or sympathetic sense, the higher use 
of which is communion with God and all higher intelligences. By 
means of this, in a perfectly natural way, we may " be strong in 
the Lord and the power of His might." (Eph. vi : 10.) We 
have seen in what precedes the wonderful power of thought over 
the bodily organism, but our thought may be re-enforced by an 
alliance with the Infinite Mind. God created and still creates the 
world and all that is in it by thought. We can so come into direct 
and immediate communication with Him that his creative energy 
shall be added to our cogitative and volitional power, so that there 
shall be a confluence of the two into a unity and harmony. Where 
is God, and how may I find Him ? We look for Kim in the dis- 
tance, and thus miss him. Says the astronomer Lalande : " I have 
swept space with my telescope, and found no God." And simply 
because he did not look for Him where alone the soul can find 
Him. We do not discover God as we do a new planet in the 
heavens. He is revealed to us in the New Testament, and demon- 
strated by the intuitive reason, as a Spirit, and a spirit is to be 
found and known by thought only, and not to be seen by the sen- 



260 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

suous eye of the body. Jesus the Christ introduced into the 
thought of the world two important ideas — 1. That God is our 
Father, and that consequently we are his sons. This implies that 
we derive our life perpetually from Him, and live in Him. There 
is in us an unbroken and ceaseless vital connection with Him. 
2. God is inward to man. Before this grand disclosure, He was 
worshiped, and adored, and sought unto as an indefinable Being, 
and at an obscure, if not unlimited, distance from men. Jesus 
taught us where to find Him. We are to seek Him within the 
enclosure of our own being. " The Father is in me, and I am in 
the Father." (John xiv: 10, 11.) We no longer seek the 
thoughts of God from external signs, or from outward oracles, as 
that of Delphi, or the Urim and Thummim of the Jews. Paul in 
an inspired moment gave utterance to one of the profoundest 
truths in the universe of mind, — the grandest verity within the 
compass of human thought, — "In Him we live and are moved and 
have our being." As certainly as the unborn infant's life is that 
of the mother, so it is divinely true that somehow God's Life 
includes ours, and we live because he lives, and shall live as long 
as He exists. Our being is comprised in His, so (hat if wo could 
suppose the Divine Life to come to an end, ours would terminate 
with it as surely — to compare great things with small — as a 
stream would cease to flow when its fountain is dried up. My 
existence may be distinct, but never separate from His. Iu the 
hidden depth of the soul there is somewhere a point where our 
individual being comes in contact with God, and is identified with 
the Infinite Life, as a bay meets the ocean. This great truth may 
not now cross the threshold or door-sill of our consciousness, but 
we may nevertheless be as certain of it as we are of the Divine 
Existence, or of our own. Swodenborg calls this deific point, whero 
God and man meet within the soul, the Divine internal, and the 
entrance of God into man, and affirms that it is by virtue of it 
that we live at all and live forever. (Arcana Celestia. 1999.) 

When we cease to think of ourselves as separated from God, 
and come to view our being as comprised in His, as a bay, how 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CUKE. 261 

ever far inland it may extend, is not disconnected from the ocean, 
then we kindle anew the smoking wick of our candle of life from 
a Divine and quenchless flame. When we see this truth in dis- 
ease, in pain, in unhappiness, the incoming tide of the ocean of 
the Divine Existence flows back into the river of our life, fills its 
banks to the full, turns its current in another direction towards 
the uplands of health and blessedness, and causes it to overflow to 
others. 

A large proportion of diseases are of a so-called nervous type, 
or, in other words, are purely mental. It is an uneasy or dissatis- 
fied state, as the word signifies, or perhaps there is a combination 
of more or less painful sensations, or a functional disturbance of 
one or more organs. All these conditions are under the control 
of the power of thought. But how is it in cases of organic dis- 
ease, or when there is an actual lesion, or loss of continuity in an 
organ ? In this case the mental state that acts as a cause is more 
fixed, and harder of removal; but to put the trouble, whatever it 
is, out of thought, to forget it, to ignore it, to think of something 
else, to institute a line of thought that is inconsistent with it, and 
to think in harmony with the unconscious effort of what we call 
nature to repair the lesion, is the best prescription for it. There 
is such a thing as a soul in nature, — an intelligent Life operating 
everywhere, in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. The 
old doctrine of an animus mundi is not without some foundation 
in reality. There is an intelligent principle recognizable by its 
constant action in every part and particle of the universe, — in the 
grain of sand, in the flower, and in the stellar orbs. Nature is 
not unintelligent, as Spinoza taught. There is an infinite current 
of living thought that runs through the whole of it. The numer- 
ous marks of design, the skillful adaptation of means to an end, 
which we see everywhere and in everything, indicate with logical 
certainty the continual presence and action of intelligent thought. 
This is not the mind of man, but must be the Over-Soul, the Uni- 
versal Mind, the Absolute Thought. There is a divinely-intelli- 
gent force at work in the human body. It seems to be the same 



2G2 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

intelligent Soul-Principle, the identical God-Power, that cease* 
lessiy operates in the world at large. When we receive an injury 
or a wound, this benevolent and intelligently-active principle goes 
to work in the most skillful and artistic manner to repair the dam- 
age. This vis reparatrix, or reconstructive force of nature, which 
is only a gleam of the operation of God's omnipotent Life in man, 
is the only remedy that can heal or relieve the injury, — heal, if it 
comes within the range of possibility, and, if not, alleviate the suf- 
fering. The soul-principle in us, especially in the preconsciou3 
range of its action, has a close relationship to the soul in nature, 
and we can assist and greatly accelerate its curative action by 
thinking in concert with it. This intelligent principle in nature 
always acts unerringly in the right direction. Our thoughts, our 
faith, our fancy, our remedies, can only be tributary and auxiliary 
to it. If our thoughts form an alliance with it, and their force is 
augmented by it, the most inveterate diseases yield to the com- 
bined therapeutic power of the finite and Infinite Mind. The vis 
medicatrix naturce is something of God in man. It is the same 
power that creates and governs the world. It is the Logos, the 
Divine Intelligence and Thought, of which nature is a permanent 
expression. God's thoughts are always in the direction of our 
highest good, — the healing of our diseases and the removal of the 
causes of our unhappiness. " For I know the thoughts that I 
think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of 
evil, to give you an expected end." (Jer. xxix: 11.) In other 
words, God's creative thought always cooperates with ours in 
every curative endeavor of our minds, to cause us to realize the 
end at which we aim. An act of faith in this divinely-intelligent, 
creative, and repairing power places the plastic action of our minds 
in alliance with it. We enter into a copartnership, a fellowship, 
a sympathy, a community with it, and the cure is at the same time 
phrenopathic and theopathic. It is a confluence of our thought 
and our imagination in their volitional healing effort with the 
Force that created, and ever creates, our bodies and the world in 
which they dwell. It places the soul-principle in us in appositioa 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 263 

and conjunction with the creative Word and the plastic Spirit. 
Tins has not retired from nature, but is still there as an intelli* 
gent conatus to heal all our diseases, though its silent action in 
the human body does not come within the grasp of consciousness. 
That which created the world and our bodies is never absent from 
them, for, as Bishop Sherlock demonstrated, preservation is a con- 
tinued creation. To find the Divine Life and Power in their 
manifestation as a creative force, we need not go to the temple of 
worship, much less back through all the ages of human history to 
a time when the solitary Deity was seized with an impulse to make 
a world out of nothing, for it is nearer to us than the world on 
which we tread, because it is the hidden spring of every physio- 
logical movement. It is the secret and mysterious virtue of every 
medicine or curative device. When, by an act of faith and im- 
agination, I think in the same direction, and in concert with this 
intelligent and Divine conatus, to repair my injury, to heal my 
wounds, or to cure my disease, and no longer by my thought 
obstruct its therapeutic and saving effort in my behalf, its action is 
intensified and accelerated. As one has said : " There is surely a 
piece of the Divinity in us; something that was before the ele- 
ments, and owes no homage to the sun. Nature tells me I am tho 
image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not this 
much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin 
the alphabet of man." (Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, 
part 2, Sec. 11.) 

There is more than a spark of the Divinity in us ; and this life 
of God in man has more to do with our restoration from disease 
than even religious people ever dream "o|, though it is a clearly 
taught doctrine of the Jewish sacred writings that it is God " who 
healeth all our diseases." (Ps. ciii : 3, cxlvii : 3; Jer. xvii : 14.) 
Cure by any of the prevailing methods is, in its inmost nature, a 
theopaihy. It is always the Divine in nature, and in man, that 
heals. As we have shown, there is a wonderful vis reparatrix, or 
repairing force, inherent in our organism. In some of the lower 
forms of animal life it is still more manifest than in man, as a 



264 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

segment of a limb is sometimes replaced by it. Hartmann calls it 
the action of the Unconscious, by which he means a sort of blind 
impersonal intelligence and will that govern the world. I see no 
good reason why we should not call it God, or, if you prefer it, the 
Logos or Word of God. With this modification of the meaning 
of the term, which takes it from what seems to border closely upon 
atheism, and brings it into harmony with a Christian theism, I 
can adopt his language when he says : " After poisoning their 
patients with drugs, the doctors have come at last to know their 
business better, and now generally stand aside, or attempt only to 
remove obstacles which ignorance or accident have put in the way, 
so as to leave free course to the curative agencies of the Uncon- 
scious, which alone can restore the patient to perfect health." 
{Boweris History of Modern Philosophy, p. 439.) 

What we call nature — a term introduced into philosophy by 
Hippocrates — is only the Deity under another name. God's uni- 
form mode of acting is what we call the laws of nature. Because 
a thing takes place in harmony with law does not exclude the idea 
of a Divine causation from it. God is not included in the world, 
nor excluded from it. The visible universe is in God, just as an 
imaginary scene of beauty, though it seems to have an external 
existence, is really in our minds. Nature without God would be 
as powerless as a body without a soul. There is not a point or 
particle of the globe that is isolated from Him. He did not roll up 
the vast orbs that compose the universe, and toss them away from 
himself like balls into empty space. He did not once, in a week 
of creative energy, make a world and then retire from it. Crea- 
tion is not a historic fact, but an ever-present reality, a thing He 
is perpetually doing. Man, including a soul and its manifestation 
in a body, is not something that has been dropped out of the 
Divine Existence, as a pebble falls out of your hand, or a coin 
from the mint, and after that has no connection with it; we are 
still in Him and He in us. He did not make a world, or a human 
body, and wind it up as you do a watch, and leave it to run down 
without Him. He winds it up continually, and without a moment's 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 265 

intermission, and is ever the hidden spring of all its movements 
The Force that created is never inoperative. God is neither an 
idle spectator of his universe nor a useless appendage to it. He 
has not left the world and the human body, which is a part of it, 
to develop themselves without his presence and interference, or, as 
Goethe somewhere ridicules this common belief, he does not " sit 
aloft seeing the world go." 

It is neither hard to find God nor difficult to commune with 
Him. The cumbersome and bungling machinery of the Church, 
invented to elevate us to Him, or bring Him down to us, is of no 
use to the spiritual man. He is as near to us as we are to our- 
selves. His being in its infinite and endless compass includes 
ours. In us He somehow comes to a self-limitation. We have 
being in him and he ex-istence in us. He becomes man, and we 
become as gods. Jesus approved the use of this appellation in its 
application to human beings, as where, in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, we read: "I have said ye are gods; and all of you 
are children of the Most High." (Ps. lxxxii: 6; John x: 34.) 
It is a sublime truth that gives dignity to human nature that in 
us God is manifested in the flesh. To realize this in some degree 
of the intenseness with which Jesus the Christ was perceptive of 
it is to be conscious of a power that we otherwise cannot possess. 
In us also the Word is made flesh and still dwells among us, for 
it is our life, and that life is the light of men. It is the true light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In saying 
this we do not undeify the Christ, but elevate human nature at 
large. In common language we call a priest or clergyman a 
divine , I affirm that other men are equally entitled to the appel- 
lation. The Word of God is not a person, much less a book, but 
the perpetual out-going and expression of his productive and en- 
lightening Thought. This Word dwells in every man as the light 
of life, and invests us with a creative potency, for all things are 
made by it. It is God's Thought, and when our minds are in 
unison with it in our struggle with disease, we are invested with 
a fraction of God's omnipotence. Here is realized a theocrasia % 



2.66 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

as it was called in ancient philosophy, a mixing with God. When 
we thus act, the boundary line between our individual effort and 
God's creative energy is obliterated, and they become merged into 
a unity, as when a child and a strong man lift a rock from its 
place, the strength of the two is mingled into one force. Jesus, 
who became in so high a degree receptive of the illuminating and 
creative Word, — which made him the Christ, — did not look upon 
his own being as separated from that of the Father, but as included 
in it. " Believe me, the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. 
The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself ; but the 
Father who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." (John xiv : 10.) 
The secret of the cures and all the marvelous works of Jesus is 
given by himself in John v: 19, 20, 30. He declares that it was 
given him distinctly to see and clearly to recognize the Divine 
operation in nature. In disease he saw a Divine power, a vis 
reparatrix at work to cure it. He identified himself with God, 
and cooperated with this Divine healing conatus in the human 
body, and thus greatly intensified its therapeutic action. In rais- 
ing the patient from disease to health, he lifted in the same direc- 
tion and in concert with God. He plainly asseverates that he 
did nothing of himself, but only what he saw the Father doing 
(noiowTu) . Why may not a sincere disciple of Jesus become 
in this a copy of the Master, and do the same ? By acting in 
unison with the Divine power in nature, which is perceived already 
at work in the case, we may be empowered to restore the sufferer 
to his normal state, — mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind 
in a sound body. This is effected not by a miracle, but, as in 
the case of the cures wrought by Jesus, by an accelerated process 
of nature. All the wonderful achievements of modern science 
and the useful arts — as telegraphy, photography, and the ten 
thousand results of machinery — are effected in the same way. In 
all human endeavor, conformity to nature is union with God. 
But there is a higher realm of nature than that whose laws we 
generally recognize in our superficial sciences and shallow philoso- 
phies, — an almost unexplored region of law in relation to the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 267 

action of spirit on matter, and of the soul upon its body. If, in 
the effort, to cure disease, I can find out how God is doing it, and 
conform my healing endeavor to the Divine method, I come into 
line with Him, and march behind the veiled God-head to the 
desired result. I can conform my effort to the Divine creative 
Thought here, as I can act in concert with the Divine law of 
gravitation in bringing the water of a spring on the mountain side 
into my habitation. In either case I do nothing of myself, but 
only what I see the Father doing. 

There is an interior gravitation of all souls towards God, their 
proper center. The wandering soul, disguise it as it may, is home- 
sick for its native land, and for rest on the bosom of the Infinite 
Love. Conscious union with the One Life, and an identification 
of our being with the only Reality, is the goal toward which we 
are running. These soul-longings are not only worship but an 
unerring prophecy of what we are to be. We are all on the 
route that leads to God, where all life begins, and in which it 
should forever consciously act. The brooklet that rushes down 
the mountain side, sometimes by a fall, then in a calm and tran- 
quil flow, is unceasingly on its way to the ocean. So the soul of 
man came from God and is returning to Him, but so as to retain 
forever the freedom of its individuality in God. 

The soul that longs for communion with God need not search 
long to find him. " Accustom yourself," says Madam Guyon, 
" to seek God within, and you will find Him." There is a Life 
within us, a living Force and intelligent Thought, that pervade 
the bodily organism. It is the Soul of our soul, the Life of our 
life, the Spring of all our knowledge. As Bishop Berkeley puts 
it : " There is a Mind that affects me every moment with all the 
sensible impressions I perceive. And, from the variety, order, 
and manner of these, I conclude the Author of them to be wise, 
powerful, and good beyond comprehension. The things perceived 
by me are known by the understanding, and produced by the will 
of an Infinite Spirit. And is not all this most plain and evident ? 
Is there any more in it than what a little observation in our own 



268 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

minds, and that which passes in them, not only enableth us to con* 
ccive but also obligeth us to acknowledge?" (Berkeley's Works, 
Vol. I, p. 303.) This brings God very near to us. This Uni- 
versal Mind and Spirit, in which is included all knowledge, all 
truth, all life, and all blessedness, perpetually acts within us. It 
thinks for us when we cannot think for ourselves. It works in 
us to will and to do when our individual wills are powerless or 
quiescent. When we cease to row, we float m the infinite current, 
and always unerringly in the right direction. When we cease from 
our own working, we do the will of God, or, in other words, God's 
will works for us and in us. The greatest possible attainment, the 
summit of our highest aspirations, is the conscious identification of 
our individual life with the One Life. Our unhappiness, oar 
misery, our restless craving for an unrealized good, our unsatisfied 
yearning, and our disease, arise from our seceding from the Univer- 
sal Life, disjoining ourselves from it by the rebellion of what we 
proudly call free will, and setting up for ourselves. If we would 
leave the strings of our harp to vibrate from sympathy with the 
music of the Universe, instead of fingering them ourselves, and 
trying to play a different tune, or on a different and discordant 
key, we should be happy and well. He who attains to the bless- 
edness of a life in God, as did Jesus the Christ, lives well and 
forever. His spiritual stature reaches from earth to the heavens. 
He has mounted upward to immortality in this present time, and 
lives eternal life on the earth. Disease and death are vanquished, 
and his individuality is merged, without being destroyed, in the 
all-comprehending Life. 

In consequence of this indwelling of God, the common Life of 
the universe, in us, recuperation is natural to the human body 
and to all living things. There is a Divine energy inherent in the 
system that immediately and with omniscient skill reacts against 
every disorder of mind or body, and exhibits itself in a psychical 
and physiological effort to restore harmony. When a crumb of 
bread enters the trachea or windpipe, with what divine violence 
all the muscles that expel the air from the lungs contract to blow 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 269 

it out. This spasmodic action of the abdominal muscles and the 
diaphragm is not a disease, but is a curative effort of the organism 
to cast out a foreign and deleterious substance from the lungs. 
When a speck of dust, or a grain of sand, enters the eye, the lach- 
rymal glands are stimulated to increased action, and the eye is 
suffused with a flood of tears to wash it out. In the case of poison 
or unwholesome food in the stomach, the first effort of the Divine 
Life, Or what we call nature, is to induce nausea and vomiting. 
The action of the stomach is inverted so as to eject its injurious 
contents at once. If this does not succeed, the next resort of the 
Divine healing energy is to increase the peristaltic action and ver- 
micular movement of the stomach and intestinal canal, so as to 
rid the system of it as soon as possible by a diarrhetic discharge. 
No mother's love, enlightened by all that medical science can give, 
could prescribe with such alacrity and skill as does nature, that 
is, the Grod-life in us, in this and all other emergencies. 

In the case of all wounds and lesions, from the prick of a pin 
to the fracture of a limb, a curative effort of nature, by which can 
be meant only a Divine energy, acting according to an established 
order we call law, exhibits itself in a skillful endeavor to heal it. 
Witness the suppuration of the flesh around a splinter that has 
pierced the hand. The pain in a sprained ankle is, as Romberg 
poetically but truly expresses it, the prayer of the sensory nerves 
for more blood, and the Divine Life of nature answers the prayer 
by crowding the surrounding parts with blood, and its swollen con- 
dition is the result. Very much that passes under the name of 
disease is only an effort of the Divine Life that is in us to cure 
the real malady. In the case of a sudden cold, where the pores of 
the skin are closed, nature throws the heat of the body to the sur- 
face, because, according to a fixed law, heat expands the contracted 
pores and opens them, thus restoring the suspended perspiration. 
The feverish condition of the body is not a disease, but only a 
curative device of nature. Instead of checking and obstructing 
this healing endeavor, we should cooperate with it, and, so far as 
our therapeutic devices go, we should aim to accelerate its action, 



270 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

as did Jesus the Christ. In our individuality we are endowed 
with free will, and, to use a Scriptural and not wholly inappropri- 
ate form of expression, we may " come to the help of the Lord " 
in his Divine curative effort. How we may do this in harmony 
with the laws of our being, it will be the object of the remaining 
part of this work to show. 



PART III. 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS, 



OH 



PEACTICAL MENTAL CURE. 



"It is the spirit tnat maketh alive; the flesh profiteth nothing."— Jesus 

the Christ. 

"As the state of the mind is capable of producing a disease, another state of 
it may effect a cure." — John Hunter. 

" If the imagination fortified have power, then it is material to know how to 
fortify and exalt it."— Lord Bacon. 

" I hope the medical reader may be induced to employ Psycho-Therapeutics 
in a more methodical way than heretofore, and thus copy nature in those 
interesting instances, occasionally occurring, of sudden recovery from the spon- 
taneous action of some powerful menntJ cause, by employing the same force 
designedly instead of leaving it to mere chance."— Dr. Daniel Hack Tuke. 






CHAPTER I. 

ON THE METHOD OF COMMUNICATING A SANATIVE MENTAL INFLU. 
ENCE. 

All the mental operations are reducible to thought and feeling, ■ •■. 
or, if you prefer the form of expression, to intellect and sensibility. 
All modifications of the mind refer themselves to one or the other. 
All existence, all life, in fact, the very essence of the soul, consists 
in either thought or feeling. Some, of whom M. Destutt Tracy, 
a follower of Condillac, is an example, make feeling to be iden- 
tical with individual existence. He is a fair representative of the 
sensational school of philosophy, and in him it received its best 
logical expression. He says : " The faculty of feeling is that 
which manifests to us all the others, without which none of them 
would exist for us, whilst it manifests itself that it is its own prin- 
ciple to itself; that it is that beyond which we are not able to 
remount, and which constitutes our existence ; that it is everything 
for us ; that it is the same thing as ourselves. I feel because I 
feel ; I feel because I exist ; and I do not exist but because I 
feel. Then my existence and my sensibility are one and the same 
thing." (Political Economy, p. 42.) The idealists, as Fichte 
and Hegel, affirm that sensation is not possible except it be accom- 
panied and preceded by thought, — that whatever is out of thought 
has no existence in feeling. Swedenborg makes the essence of the 
human soul to consist in the union of thought and feeling, or, as 
he puts it, the conjunction of the wisdom and the love. The ques- 

273 



274 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

tion which is prior and which is posterior, or which is cause and 
which is effect, I shall not here discuss. It will be my aim to 
show that both, as states of mind, are communicable to other minds 
for the modification of their spiritual and physical condition. In 
this the cure of disease consists. 

It has been shown in the preceding chapters that thoughts are 
things. I do not mean by this that they are material, but sub- 
stantial realities, and are that which gives reality and existence to 
everything else. Thoughts and ideas are not as they are usually 
supposed, mere shadows or abstractions, but are manifestations or 
modifications of the substance of the soul, and are more real than 
material things, for these have no properties that are not reducible 
to sensations and thoughts in our minds. Thoughts are the most 
substantial of realities, and are in fact the only real things in the 
universe. But they are transmissible entities. They can be 
transferred from one mind to another. This fact is put to a prac- 
tical use in the pulpit, and in all our systems of education. In it 
is found the power of the press in modern civilization. In it also 
I shall show lies the power of the physician to an extent never 
recognized by the prevailing schools of medicine. If thought and 
existence are identical, as has been shown in the previous chapters 
of this volume, then it follows that to change our mode of think- 
ing is to modify our existence. 

Thoughts may be excited in the minds of others through the 
medium of words. This is by an external way, and is compara- 
tively imperfect, for words have not exactly the same meaning to 
any two minds. This common mode of communication, which is 
adopted in our ordinary social life, is of no use unless there previ- 
ously exists in the mind which you address an idea corresponding 
to the word you utter. Words can only excite latent thoughts in 
another's soul, and never originate them. If you speak in an 
unknown tongue, you excite only a sensation of sound which has 
no meaning. A person may talk to us all day in a language 
which we do not understand and give us no idea. The same may 
be said of written language, which is addressed to the eye instead 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 275 

of the ear. In the case of words, as a medium of communicating 
thought to the mind of another, it is through the principle of sen- 
sation, either that of hearing or sight, that the ideas they repre- 
sent are excited. Yet words have a spiritual potency in them 
when addressed to one who understands them, or can he made to 
feel their meaning as we do. Then his soul, his inner being, is 
made to vibrate, as it were, in harmony with ours. 

But words, either spoken or written, are not absolutely neces- 
sary to the communication of thought from one mind to another. 
There is a more direct and spiritual way in which it may be done, 
even through sensation. You ask me a question, and I answer it 
in the affirmative by a nod, and in the negative by a shake of the 
head, and you perfectly understand me, though no words are used. 
So does a child, for the recognition of the meaning is instinctive and 
intuitional. But cannot this be done through the sense of touch as 
well as through the sight or hearing ? This sense is the most spiritual 
and interior of all our senses. It is that to which all the others 
are reducible, and underlies them all. Without it no sensation 
would be possible. This is a doctrine of .Swedenborg's* psychology, 
and is manifestly true. There is a tendency in the minds of two 
persons who are in tactual contact towards a oneness of thought 
and feeling. This takes place through a universal principle of 
human nature denominated psychometry, but which I prefer to 
call the sympathetic sense. If I wish the person sitting or stand- 
ing next to me to move away, a slight push of the hand excites in 
him both the thought and the impulse to do so. It calls into 
action in him all the muscles concerned in the movement. This 
is, when carefully examined, a marvelous phenomenon. It is 
only because it is so common that we cease to wonder at it. I 
communicate to him by my touch a thought of a complicated mus- 
cular movement and a tendency toward it. But is it out of the 
range of possibility to affect, by the same hand, the natural action 
of other organs, — as the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stom- 
ach, the liver, or the peristaltic action of the bowels V There is 
no good reason why an impulse cannot be transmitted on the 



276 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

wings of an invisible thought as a messenger to those organs. It 
is in itself no more unreasonable than that your feeling of approval 
is communicable to another by a pat of the hand on his shoulder, 
or a feeling of disapproval by a blow proportioned in force to the 
degree of your displeasure. A pressure of the hand signifies 
friendship. It has that meaning to everybody. There is a sort 
of instinctive Masonry by which our thoughts and feelings are 
communicated to others by the touch, and which all souls under- 
stand. I use these only as examples, or illustrations, of the trans- 
ference of thought and feeling from one mind to another through 
the medium of the hand and the sensation of touch. When the 
hand is placed on the head of a patient, at the point of impact 
your mind comes into contact, as it were, with his mind, for sensa- 
tion is not in the external body, but in the spiritual organism. If 
he is receptive, or in any degree impressible, your thoughts and 
healthy emotional states can be transmitted to him, or more prop- 
erly excited in him, as they do not pass out of your mind in com- 
ing into his. An impulse towards a healthy action may in this 
way be imparted to any organ of his body. This has been estab- 
lished by experiment. Here is the philosophy of the method of 
cure by the imposition of hands, which, as the primitive, instinct- 
ive means of cure, is again being restored to the healing art. It 
was practiced by Jesus the Christ and his disciples or scholars, which 
ought to be enough to give it currency among those who assume 
his name and profess to copy his life. The hand was used in 
order that through the sensation of touch (which is only in the 
mind of the patient) your thought, to which is given a healing 
intention, may be communicated to his soul, and through this affect 
the body. In this condition of mental contact with him the physi- 
cian thinks, imagines, and believes for the patient, and if he is 
highly susceptible his mind will vibrate in harmony with yours; if 
not fully impressible, it will create a tendency towards your line of 
thought and feeling. It is like what we witness in the material 
world when a body in motion communicates its movement to 
another body, and both move onward in the same direction. 



THE DIVINE LAW OE CURE 277 

There is a. still more interior way of communication "between the 
mind or spirit of one and the mind or spirit of another, by which 
thought may be transmitted and an influence imparted. No actual 
physical contact is necessary to it. The eye is an organ of thought 
in an eminent degree. Every one knows there is a meaning in a 
look, a hidden signification in a glance, as much as in a word. 
Vision may be a passive state or a voluntary act. The same is 
true of hearing, which is often without effort on our part, But to /.. 
listen or hearken is an act of will. It requires attention or a con- 
centration of thought. To gaze at another is an act of will, and a 
determination of thought towards the object. It gives a definite 
direction to thought, and brings the whole power of the mind to a 
focal point. The thought, to use an analogy, or to speak accord- 
ing to appearance, goes forth from the eye, and enters the mind of 
the patient through this aperture of the soul. There is such a 
thing as a spiritual eye, or " eye of the mind," as Mr. Atkinson 
denominates it. As a phrenologist, he locates it just beneath the 
organ of comparison. " It seems," he says, " to split off into the 
senses, as light divides off into colors, or sound into notes, but to 
contain within itself the power of mind concentrated.'' 1 {The 
Laws of Man's Nature and Development, p. 7 6.) This cogita- 
tive gaze, this look with fixed attention, and concentration of 
thought, was employed by Peter and John in the cure of the lame 
man at the gate of the temple. In the brief report that is given 
of the case it is said : " They fastened their eyes upon Mm, and 
said to him, 'Look on us,' " and then commanded him to rise and 
walk. With the word was communicated a power to do it, for a 
thought imparted to another may be made to enclose a feeling. 
It may be, as it were, the outward wrapping of an emotion or 
impulse. Also this same power of mind concentrated, this cogi- 
tative gaze, may be made to act at a distance. And why not ? 
Is there anything incredible in it? If the sound of an uttered 
word, or a sentence, may be transmitted on an electric wave for 
hundreds of miles through the telephone, why may not a mental 
force, which acts independently of material restraints and limita- 



278 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

tions be conveyed to any distance ? Distance between minds is 

more an internal feeling than a material measurement. 

Thought may be directly impressed by one mind upon that of 

another. As Paul and Swedenborg both teach, thought is entheal, 

that is, it comes from God and is something of the Divine Life in 

man. (2 Cor. iii: 5 ; Arcana Celestia, 1707, 2004.) It is this 

that gives such power to our thoughts both over ourselves and 

others. It is this that makes them — to use an uncommon but 

proper word — entheastic, or having in them the energy of God. 

As has been said in a previous chapter, thought has in it a creative 

force. The words of Byron can hardly be viewed as a poetic 

exaggeration, — 

" The nrind can make 
Substance, and people planets of its own 
With beings brighter than have been, and give 
A breath to forms that can outlive all flesh." 

By the productive power of thought and imagination the Divine 
Mind made, and still makes, the world. We, being in his image, 
and thinking from Him, make our bodies, which are our world, in 
the same way. A state of theopathy, or sympathy with God, 
invests us with the power of theurgy, or of doing Divine works. 
Every true manhood might properly, though in a mitigated sense, 
be named Immanuel, or God with us. (Mat. i : 23.) The 
Greeks in their beautiful and expressive language spoke of certain 
persons as theophoroi, or as carrying a God within them, and also 
sf others as theophron, that is, having a divine mind, or as being 
livinely wise. Tins is more or less true of all great and wise 
men. But when we speak of God as within man, we must be 
careful not to take a material view of it. We do not mean the 
same as when we say that one body is enclosed within the spatial 
limitations of another, like an idol in a temple. That God is 
inward to man involves the idea that God's Life is the One Life 
of the universe, and that our life is bound up in a necessary unity 
with his. (1 Samuel xxv : 29.) There is in reality no finite life, 
as all in heaven and earth live by an influx from the Universal 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 279 

Life. For the game reason, there is no finite intelligence and 
thcught. All that I know, or can know, or even think, is from 
the uncreated fount of knowledge, and I am only a recipient of it. 
To think in harmony and concert with God is to fully realize this 
when we think. This brings our thought into unison with the 
action of the Divine Mind, and gives to it a Divine and saving 
efficacy. 

When a patient is in a passive, and consequently impressible 
and receptive, state, and with his eyes closed, so as to shut out from 
his mind all sensational images of external things, our thoughts 
may be imparted to him, or at least we can change the character 
and direction of his thinking. This can be done either when in 
actual tactual contact with him or at a distance. In addition 
to a state of passivity, he should be in a state of sympathy 
with the physician. These conditions being fulfilled, his mind 
becomes a tabula rasa, or clean slate, on which our thoughts may 
be written, and even without the intervention of spoken words. 
"What we imagine, and believe, and think, will be transferred 
to him, for the stronger and more active mind will control the 
other. Thought is an interior speech, or inward word. It is 
the proper language of souls, the universal language of spirit. 
As God's thoughts can be imparted to us by inspiration, so we 
can impress our ideas and feelings upon the minds of others, and 
inspire them with them. The physician who does this to the 
invalid, and infuses into him his faith and hope and courage, or, 
in other words, a better mode of thinking and feeling, has touched 
the interior spring of his existence, and is, in the true sense of the 
word, a doctor or teacher. It was in this office that Jesus the 
Christ cured the most inveterate diseases. He was a guide of men's 
thoughts, an instructor of their souls. In the Gospels, wherever 
he is called master in our English translation, in the original 
Greek it is teacher. (Mat. xxiii : 8, 10 ; John xiii : 13.) Hence, 
his followers were called disciples or learners. By thus modify- 
ing the inward spring of existence, he changed the position of the 
heiin of the soul, and put it on a new tack in the voyage of life ; 



280 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

and, by a Divine law, the inner change was translated into a bodily 
expression. 

If it be true, as Swedenborg affirms, that all power is in idti- 
mates, because the spiritual force is then in its completeness and 
fullness, then it follows that thoughts, expressed in their appropri- 
ate words, may have an added potency, and their effects may be 
made thereby more permanent; but it should never be forgotten 
that the spiritual idea, which is as the soul of the word, is that 
alone which gives to it a healing and saving efficacy. Without 
this, an uttered word or sentence is only an empty sound. It is 
only a frozen corpse, and not a living spirit in whom is the breath 
of a Divine Life. It is the idea, the thought, that imparts to 
a word a sanative virtue. "It is the spirit that maketh alive : the 
flesh prouteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you are 
spirit and are life." (John vi: 63.) Feuerbach eloquently 
speaks of the healing power of the word. " Man has not only an 
instinct, an internal necessity, which impels him to think, to per- 
ceive, to imagine; he has also the impulse to speak, to utter, to 
impart his thoughts. A divine impulse this, — a divine power, the 
power of words. The word is the imaged, revealed, radiating, 
lustrous, enlightening thought. The word is life and truth. All 
power is given to the word. The word makes the blind to see 
and the lame to walk, heals the sick, and brings the dead to life, 
— the word works miracles, and the only rational miracles. The 
word is the Gospel, the paraclete of mankind. The word has 
power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to make free. We know 
no higher spiritually operative power and expression of power than 
the power of the word. God created the world and all things by 
the word, so that to God it is no more difficult to create than it is 
for us to name." (Feuerbach 's JSssence of Christianity, pp. Ill, 
112.) 

A word, an uttered sentence, into which is concentrated the 
soul-life and heart-life of him who pronounces it, and which is 
animated by a Divine thought, a living truth, has in it a healing 
virtue above anything in a material drug. The right word at the 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 281 

right time can reach the inner life of man and make us whole. 
It can change the whole current and quality of a human life. 
" He sent his word and healed them, aDd delivered them from their 
destructions." (Ps. cvii: 20.) He who has to do with the dis- 
eased in mind or body need not talk much, but should pray for 
the right word, and should put the energy of faith and love into 
its expression. It is more powerful against our spiritual foes than 
the spear of Ithuriel. There is some word that lies as a silent 
thought in the Mind of God, the Infinite Spirit-Presence. It is 
what God would say to the unhappy and diseased one were He 
to break the sublime silence in which He dwells and speak to 
him. In it is a message freighted with life, and health, and 
peace. Let us hold our soul passively open and upward to receive 
it, and give it utterance. It has in it the power of God, and the 
wisdom of God unto salvation. Many a longing soul is feeling, 
if not saying : " Speak the word only, and I shall be healed." 
(Mat. viii : 8.) It was by the power of the right word and the 
spirit that Jesus healed disease. He condensed into a brief sen- 
tence the whole force of his inner life, — his faith, his love, his 
benevolent healing intention, his desire and volition, — which was 
sent forth as an assertion or a command. It was like the creative 
fiat, lux esto, let there be light, and the living, all vitalizing light of 
the heavens flashed upon the diseased mind. It reduced its chaos 
to order and Divine harmony, and a body in ruins was restored to 
wholeness and health. We ought to ascertain, so far as practi- 
cable, the precise nature of the disordered mental state, or fixed 
mode of thought, that is the spiritual root of the patient's malady, 
and which has crystalized, through the law of correspondence, into 
an organic expression in the body. This should be attacked by 
the psycho-therapeutic force from every point of approach. The 
patient should himself freely aid in the spiritual diagnosis of his 
case. The Roman Catholic Church maintains the Divine order 
when it makes confession a necessary antecedent of absolution, or 
a being released. (See also James v: 16.) The sin — the error, 
the falsity, as the word means — should be remitted or sent away 



282 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

In order to this he should be like clay in the hands of the potter, 
to be transformed by the divinely-established dominion of mind 
over matter, and of the soul over the body. In a state of passivity, 
or mental inertia, the mind acts only as it is acted upon. This 
state can be assumed at will, and is one of great impressibility or 
susceptibility to impression from the thoughts and emotions of 
others, as a vessel without a helm is driven before the wind. In 
assuming this condition before the good physician, the patient 
becomes like a ship that has lowered its sails and is being towed 
by a steamer into a safe harbor. The secret of the influence of 
what is called magnetism is the influence of the thought and will 
of the operator over the mind, and through the mind, over 
the body of another. When the patient is passive and, conse- 

f quently, impressible, he is made to fix his thought with expectant 
attention upon the effect to be produced. In addition the physi- 
cian thinks the same effect, tranquilly and strongly wills it, and 
believes and imagines that it is being done. The mental action of 
the patient, augmented by that of his assistant, and conjoined with 
it into a harmonious and sympathetic unity, is precipitated upon 
the body, and becomes a silent, transforming, sanative energy. It 
must be a malady more than ordinarily obstinate that is neither 

, relieved nor cured by it. 

The power of thought in modifying the bodily condition and 
affecting the functional action of an organ may be shown by a 
single fact. "Although it is well known," says Dr. Tuke, "that 
powerful emotions act strongly upon the uterine functions, it is 
not so well understood how marked an influence an ideational 
faculty, in the form of concentrated attention, exerts over them. 
A striking case is reported by Mr. Braid which illustrates this 
fact very clearly. The effect took place, moreover, in a state of 
the system not rendered susceptible at the time by his special 
method, — that of hypnotism. He had, on a previous occasion, 
relieved a state of amenorrhoea by a mixed method, partly hypnotic 
and partly mental, but it then occurred to him that, inasmuch as 
he attributed his success in her case entirely to fixed mental atten- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 283 

tion with a predominant idea (and faith in the result), he might 
succeed by the psychical process alone, without sending her to sleep, 
— in fact, while she was wide awake. He tried the experiment, 
addressing her thus : ' Now, keep your mind firmly fixed on what 
you know should happen.' In the meanwhile he allowed his own 
will to be passive, and read a book. At the expiration of eleven 
minutes the experiment ended, and the desired result took place 
within that period. The same treatment was adopted when 
required on subsequent occasions, and with the same success." 
This case speaks volumes of the power of attention, or concen- 
trated thought, combined with faith and imagination, over every 
organ of the body. (Influence of the Mind upon the Body in 
Health and Disease, by Daniel Hack Tuke, pp. 393, 394.) 



CHAPTER n. 

THE INFLUENCE OP THOUGHT ON THE BODY, AND A PRACTICAL 

USE OP IT IN THE CURE OP DISEASE. 

To think and consciously to exist are one and the same, as was 
affirmed by Descartes in his celebrated proposition, cogito, ergo 
sum, I think, therefore I am. Mr. Worcester defines thought to 
be " the exercise of the mind in any way except sense and percep- 
tion." The exception here is not necessary, as neither sensation 
nor perception is possible without thought. I prefer the view of 
Descartes, followed by Hegel, that all mental action in its last 
analysis is a mode of thought, and it is equally certain that men- 
tal action is the only life of the body, in fact, is the highest form 
of vital activity. Bodily movements are the expression, or press- 
ing outward, as the word signifies, of a mental activity which is 
reducible to some form of thought. Thought is universally present 
and underlies every act of the mind. Spinoza affirms that God 
is Thinking Being. In the philosophy of Descartes, the mind, 
which is an image of God, is a thinking thing. As we have said 
above, thought and existence are identical. We cannot love 
unless we love something of which we think, — something that 
must first come into thought. We cannot remember, or imagine, 
or believe, or doubt, or perceive, or conceive anything that does 
not first become a thought. We cannot will anything, or deter- 
mine upon any action, unless it is first presented to the mind as an 
object of thought, and becomes an object of desire. We cannot 

284 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 285 

desire that of which we have no pre-existing thought or idea. 
Take away from us the power of thought, and all mental activity 
and conscious life disappear with it. The body also would become 
sensationless and motionless, a deserted and closed temple of God 
in which divine service is over. This view of the relation of 
thought to life and existence will render intelligible what will be 
said as to its influence upon the bodily condition. It was a grand 
conception of Hegel, that as God creates the world by thinking it, 
so it is governed and progresses according to the laws of thought 
or logic. This is the central idea of his Philosophy of History. 
The same is true of the human body, which is the external world 
which the soul creates for its manifestation and as the theater of its 
activity. Its conditions of health and disease are formed by thought 
and governed by its laws. Physiology and pathology are a living 
logic As there is a " logic of events " in the history of the 
world at large, so there is in the varying conditions of the human 
body the same unbending order of sequence, — the same law of 
spiritual cause and physical effect. 

Ideas, which are the images and inmost reality of all created 
things always tend to an external or material manifestation. If 
the mind forms an idea of a change in the bodily status, and holds 
itself steadily and tenaciously to that idea, it originates, or at 
least intensifies, an effort of nature, that is, an unconscious action 
of mind, to express itself outwardly, and to form the body after the 
pattern of the preexisting idea. All outward things are but the 
exteriorization of ideas. The world, with all it contains, is only 
the realization, or actuality on the mental plane of sense, of God's 
thought, and our bodies sustain the same relation to the creating 
soul. If God, as an Infinite Spirit, creates the universe by thought, 
as Plato, the apostle John, Swedenborg, Berkeley, Fichte, and 
Hegel all essentially agree in teaching, then thought is the primal 
force and the greatest power in the world. It is that from which 
all things exist and subsist, or have continued being. 

We have a proof of the influence and power of thought over the 
body in the way in which suggestion, directed to the mind respect- 



286 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

ing the action of the organs, operates upon them. Says Dr. "Wil- 
kinson : " By touching the abdomen over the colon, and suggest- 
ing the effect, we can, in susceptible persons, produce the results of 
aperient medicines, and abolish constipation for years. This 
order of facts has an important bearing upon the origin as well as 
cure of disease, rendering it probable that a large number of ills 
come directly out of the patient's mind ; for if alteration of fancy 
heals, this suggests that fancy first engendered the complaint. " 
{Human Body, and its Connection with Man, p. 374.) 

Few persons ever become aware of the influence of thought 
upon the body, though they see how much it has to do with our 
mental states. " Surely, as I have thought, so shall it come to 
pass," is an expression of the law of our being, as an image of 
God. (Isa. xiv : 24.) The thought of a thing is a spiritual 
touch or contact with it, — it is an ideal and real creation of it. 
To think of a dishonorable act will excite a feeling of shame, 
which will inject the capillaries of the face with arterial blood, and 
a blush is suffused over the countenance. The thought of danger, 
either as a memory of the past, or an anticipation of the future, or 
even as an imaginary peril, will quicken and weaken the action of 
the heart. But a real danger that is not an object of thought and 
consciousness has no effect upon us. The sword suspended over 
the head of Damocles by a single hair affects him not if he does 
not think of it. I knew a lady who safely passed a bridge, that 
was undergoing repairs, on horseback, one dark and stormy night, 
and on a string-piece, but who fainted on being told of it the morn- 
ing after. It may be worth the trouble of inquiring if physicians 
do not often create, or at least greatly aggravate, the diseases of 
their patients by telling them of them ? Where ignorance is both 
bliss and health it is folly to be wise. A man may have a valvu- 
lar lesion of the heart, and live to be ninety years of age, if he 
does not know it, or think of it. But the knowledge of it soon 
proves fatal. It may sound harsh to say it, but it is perhaps true, 
that the shallow medical science of the young practitioner may 
become almost a fatal mental poison to his patient, especially if 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE 287 

he makes an ostentatious display of it in telling of a disease of 
which the patient never thought before. 

The law of association, by which ideas become so connected 
together in thought that to think of one suggests or calls up the 
other, is one of the widest in its action and one of the most impor- 
tant of all the laws of mind. It is the key that unlocks many of 
the more mysterious phenomena of the mind, but is one of the 
least familiar of the mental laws, being generally overlooked by 
the great majority of psychologists. I know of no writer on men- 
tal science who gives to it anything like the importance that 
belongs to it except Mr. James Mill. It is one of the funda- 
mental laws of thought, the influence of which is constantly felt 
in all forms of mental activity. 

Disease is often kept in thought, and consequently in existence 
and consciousness, by the law of association. The morbid condi- 
tion becomes connected in idea with certain disagreeable sensations. 
Whenever these are felt we think of the disease ; and the thought 
of the disease calls up and brings into consciousness the unpleas- 
ant sensations, just as the sight, or thought, of a surgical instru- 
ment revives the idea of the pain it once caused us, and in a 
degree we feel the pain again. 

What we should aim at in the treatment of disease is to break 
up this association, this morbid concatenation of thought and sen- 
sation, and form a new one to take its place. In painful affec- 
tions a counter-irritant is sometimes employed, which, by creating 
a new pain or discomfort, diverts the attention from the original 
one, and puts it out of thought and consciousness. Whatever course 
we may take, the thought of the disease must be supplanted by the 
idea of a remedy that has given and still gives relief. This asso- 
ciation must be made equally strong with the other. The new 
association becomes the means of the oblivescence, or forgetfulness, 
of the disease ; and in proportion as a disease is out of thought, or 
we become oblivious of it, it is cured. The word cure, from the 
Latin cura, care, implies that we no longer care for it, or, in 
other words, we cease to think of it, or be anxious about it. 



288 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

In the work of James Mill — Analysis of the Phenomena of the 
Human Mind — it is shown, in the chapter on the Will, that all 
action in the body is the result of the contraction of fibres, and 
these fibrous contractions are effected: 1, by sensations; 2, by 
ideas. In the early period of life all our movements are reflex, 
or the result of sensation, which includes what is called irritation. 
Of a violent muscular contraction and movement generated by 
sensation we have a familiar example in sneezing. A pungent 
odor enters the nostrils, irritates their mucous surface, and is the 
occasion of a certain sensation. Immediately there follows it the 
spasmodic and violent action of a great number of muscles in the 
act called sneezing. In drinking water, if a few drops enter the 
larynx, the sensation occasioned by it calls into sudden action all 
the muscles concerned in expelling the air from the lungs, which 
violently contract to eject the foreign substance from them. This 
is the familiar movement of coughing. Hiccough is an involun- 
tary movement of the muscles, produced by an irritative sensation 
in the stomach, as is often experienced after swallowing capsi- 
cum. The violent contraction of the muscles in vomiting is occa- 
sioned by a disagreeable sensation in the pharynx, or stomach. So, 
the action of the heart and lungs, the peristaltic motion of the ali- 
mentary canal, and the functional motion of all the organs, are 
caused by some irritation that may be expressed by the word sen- 
sation, but of which we are not always conscious. But sensation 
is a mental phenomenon. It is only a conscious or unconscious 
thinking. Hence, ideas as well as sensations are the cause of 
muscular actions in the body, and have the same effect as sensa- 
tions. I will give a few familiar illustrations of this. We know 
that a disagreeable or painful sensation, occasioned by the contact 
of some foreign substance with the eye. causes the eyelid to close. 
But if a person rapidly thrusts his finger towards the eye, and 
near it, we cannot avoid closing it, or, as it is called, winking. 
Here it is not a sensation, but only the thought of one, that pro- 
duces the effect. The contraction of the muscles follows the 
thought with as much certainty as it would the sensation if some- 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 289 

thing touched the eye. This, as Mr. Mill remarks, "is not a mat- 
ter of conjecture, it is a matter of fact. It is an experienced 
event." It is important to observe that the thought is the last 
part of the mental operation, and immediately precedes the act. 
This is not only a fact but a significant fact, as illustrating the 
power of thought as a motor force in the body. Take that curi- 
ous phenomenon, which is peculiar to human nature, called laugh- 
ter. It affects the whole body. It is a remarkable instance of a 
general muscular action, and of an effect that extends through the 
organism, produced by thought. We laugh from a ludicrous 
thought or a ridiculous idea, whether spoken by others or read in 
a book. Sometimes, long afterwards, when the idea is by any 
means revived, we laugh again, even when alone. The opposite 
of laughter is sobbing and weeping. This also influences the 
whole body. The grief from which weeping springs is the effect 
of a certain train of ideas, and without the existence in the mind 
of those antecedent painful thoughts could have no place in us. 

Dr. Daniel Turner, a medical writer of a past age, in his De 
Morbis Cutaneis, says that the bare imagination of a purging 
potion has wrought such an effect in many persons as to produce 
a cathartic effect equal to that caused by medicine. He mentions 
the case of a young gentleman, a patient of his, who, having occa- 
sion to take many emetics, had such an antipathy to them that 
ever after he could vomit as strongly by thinking of them as most 
persons do by taking them into the stomach. (MilVs Analysis of 
the Phenomena of the Human Mind, Vol. II, p. 341.) 

In reading the excellent work of Dr. Tuke, on the Influence of 
the Mind upon the Body, we should naturally come to the conclu- 
sion that a " psychical virus," in the shape of a morbid imagina- 
tion, was the only cause of disease, which may not be so far from 
the truth, whatever may have been his aim. Nearly every disease 
known to medical science is shown to have been caused by it, and 
to have been a malade imaginaire. Prof. Dick, of Edinburg, 
expresses the opinion of many distinguished medical men when 
he says " that hydrophobia in man is not the result of any poison 



290 THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 

introduced into the system, but merely the melancholy and often 
fatal results of panic fear. Those who are acquainted with the 
effects of sympathy, irritation, and panic in the production of nerv- 
ous disorders will readily apprehend our meaning, and, if our 
view be correct, the immense importance of disabusing the public 
mind on the subject is apparent." 

Miiller mentions the instance, by no means uncommon, of a per- 
son's teeth being set on edge by witnessing another about to pass 
a sharp instrument over glass or porcelain ; also the production of 
shuddering by the mere mentioning of objects which, if present, 
would excite that sensation. In these cases it is simply a thought 
that produces the effect. Similar effects may be produced by 
what is called a recollective imagination. Herbert Spencer says : 
" I cannot think of seeing a slate rubbed with a dry sponge with- 
out there running through me the same thrill that actually seeing 
it produces." There are few persons who realize the important 
influence of our thoughts over our bodily condition. Miiller has 
investigated this subject more fully than most physiological 
authors have done ; and, as a condensed statement of all that he 
has written, he lays down the principle that " the idea of a par- 
ticular motion determines a current of nervous action towards the 
necessary muscles, and gives rise to the motion independent of the 
will." But thought is capable of influencing the action of any 
organ in the body, as well as the voluntary muscles, by determin- 
ing a current of nervous, or, in other words, of mental, force to it. 

We have in a well-authenticated fact, mentioned by Drs. Buck- 
nill and Tuke, a case which illustrates the influence of an idea 
accompanied by a strong emotion, and directed to a particular part 
of the body. A lady of intelligence, while passing a public insti- 
tution, saw a child with his foot in such a position that a heavy 
iron gate swinging together seemed as if about to crush it. The 
child escaped unharmed, but the ankle of the lady became so lame 
that it was with difficulty she could reach home, a distance of a 
quarter of a mile. The inflammation of the foot was so severe 
that she was confined to the bed for many days. The truth of the 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 291 

story is vouched for by both those intelligent physicians. (Mom* 
ual of Psychological Medicine, p. 165.) This fact only exhibits, 
in an exaggerated degree, an influence that is at work in the 
generation of most chronic disorders, which are only the bodily 
expression of a fixed mode of thinking. But would not the same 
principle — that is, an idea accompanied with deep emotion, and 
directed to a particular part of the body — act with equal efficiency 
in the cure of disease ? There are numerous facts which show 
that it can, and often does, as in the case of the cures that are 
wrought in answer to prayer, and those effected at the tombs of 
saints. Facts of this kind are as well authenticated as any recorded 
in the history of man. But do they not give us the glimpse of 
a law that is worthy of investigation, and one which can be put to 
a practical use ? If, as Iago is made by Shakespeare to say, there 
are things — 

'• The thought whereof 
Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw our vitals," 

is there not in an idea a therapeutic influence of equal potency? 

The influence of thought, or of a change in the dominant idea, 
in the cure of painful affections is well illustrated by what so fre- 
quently occurs with those who are suffering from odontalgia, or 
toothache. How often does it happen that while patients are on 
their way to the dentist the pain entirely disappears ? The men- 
tal process of cure in these cases may be a feeling of fear of the 
dentist, and a dread of the pain attending the extraction of the 
tooth. Tins diverts the attention, that is, the thought, from the 
painful tooth, and has the same effect upon it that sleep would 
have. Or it may be and quite often is this : while on Ms way to 
the dentist, the sufferer feels a wish that it was not necessary. 
Then he begins to doubt whether the pain after all is so very bad, 
and becomes convinced that much of it has arisen from the exag- 
gerating effects of impatience, and is, in fact, no worse than the 
operation of extracting it. By the time he reaches the office of 
the dreaded dentist, he has convinced himself that the tooth does 



292 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

not ache at all. And such is the fact, at least for the time, if not 
ever after. The same mental process would cure us of most, if 
not all, diseases. In the case mentioned, it is certainly the influ- 
ence of the mind upon the body that effects the therapeutic result. 
It is in reality a change of thought that does all this. But is it 
not possible so to discipline our minds that we can by a voluntary 
effort, through faith and imagination, gain relief and effect a cure 
in all similar cases ? In the case just described, the same princi- 
ple of cure is equally applicable to most diseases and painful affec- 
tions. Can a good reason be given why it is not ? It is not 
impossible that we have here, in a brief compass, the germ of a 
far-reaching and profound spiritual science of healing. 

There is no part of the human body that would seem to be more 
inaccessible and impervious to a mental influence than warts. A 
wart is defined by Dr. Mason Good as a firm, arid, harsh extuber- 
ance of the common integuments, and found chiefly on the hands. 
Its vital connection with the body would, at first sight, appear to 
be but little more intimate than the clothing we wear. Yet there 
are many cases recorded by distinguished physicians where they have 
been made to disappear under the influence of the trivial, and in 
themselves inert, devices employed by popular superstition to 
remove them, and this after caustics and all other orthodox remedies 
have failed to exterminate them. Lord Bacon records a cure of 
them in his own case by one of the many means resorted to in such 
cases by the people, and which was recommended to him by the 
wife of an English embassador, and which could have had no pos- 
sible influence over them other than the tendency of an idea 
towards an external expression in the bodily organism ; or it may 
have been through that mode of thought which we call faith and 
imagination. But both these are, or may be, voluntary acts of 
the mind. In so trifling a matter we see an exhibition of one of 
the most important laws of our nature. The power of thought 
that causes the disappearance of a wart is available for the cure 
of a cancer, and most of "the ills that flesh is heir to." For 
whatever, as to the bodily condition, we think to be true, either by 



THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE. 203 

a spontaneous impulsion or by a tenacious, volitional effort, 
becomes to us a reality. This takes place not by accident or 
chance, but by the operation of one of the deepest laws of our 
being. This is not a new truth, for Solomon, by a flash of Divine 
inspiration, three thousand years ago, said of man, that as he 
thinketh in his heart, so is he. (Prov. xxiii : 7.) Jonathan 
Edwards, who, as is not generally known, embraced the doctrine 
of Bishop Berkeley as to the external world, asserts "that all 
existence is mental, and the existence of all exterior things (includ- 
ing of course the human body and its varying conditions) is 
ideal." (Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards, by Sereno E. D wight. 
Appendix. Kemarks in Mental Philosophy.) In accordance 
with this doctrine, disease becomes non-existent to the same extent 
in which we cease to recognize it in thought and by the will. 

Of the power of thought to affect the body Mrs. Hemans 
speaks, under the influence of an inspiration as high as that of 
Solomon, when she says — 

" Swift thoughts that came and went, 
Like torrents o'er me sent, 
Have shaken as a reed this thrilling frame." 

The most intelligent medical practitioners are beginning to real- 
ize that the mind is the most real department of our being, and 
are coming to suspect, if not clearly to perceive, that all diseases 
of a so-called nervous type arise from some prior mental disturb- 
ance, and are only the physical counterpart and outward expres- 
sion, or pressing out, of a spiritual inharmony. By a law of cor- 
respondence, the mental abnormality records and perpetuates itself 
in the morbid condition of the body, which is always a creation of 
the mind into its own image. The mental condition of the patient 
is not to be viewed as a mere symptom of the bodily disorder, but 
is the prime element, the underlying reality, of the disease. In 
fact, the morbid condition of the body is symptomatic of the 
unsoundness of the mental state. There can be no doubt of the 
influence of a fixed morbid thinking in the generation of a dis- 



294 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

eased action in the bodily organs, nor of the power and impor 
tance of a sound mental activity in originating and accelerating a 
cure. 

Disease, like everything else in the universe, being a creation of 
thought, and having no existence except in thought, or, to express 
it in another form, it being the materialization of an idea, it should 
be the aim of the physician to banish it from the thought of the 
patient, and exile it into the region of forgetfulness. As has been 
said in a former part of this work, that of which we do not think 
has to us no existence. It is during the continuance of the obli- 
vescence, so far as we are concerned, as good as annihilated. 
That of which we do not think does not come into our conscious- 
ness. There are many well-attested facts to show that men, in the 
ardor of battle, receive wounds of a serious nature without being 
aware of them until after a considerable lapse of time. We have 
a large amount of unsuspicious evidence of this. A pleasurable 
or painful sensation to which we give no attention is not felt. On 
this subject Mr. James Mill remarks : " If any man tries to sat- 
isfy himself what it is to have a painful sensation, and what it is 
to attend to it, he will find little means of distinguishing them. 
Having a pleasurable or painful sensation, and attending to it, 
seem not to be two things, but one and the same thing. The feel- 
ing a pain is attending to it; and attending to it is feeling it. 
The feeling it is not one thing, the attention another; the feeling 
and the attention are the same." (Analysis of the Phenomena 
of the Human Mind, Vol. II., p. 364.) Attention is only a con- 
centration of thought, or, as it is sometimes called, directed con- 
sciousness. Hence, it follows that if attention and pain are one 
and the same, if we cease to attend to a pain, that is, to direct our 
thoughts to it, we cease to have it or feel it. It passes out of con- 
sciousness and out of existence. The same is true of disease and 
of every discomfort. Here is a most important and uniform law 
of our nature, and one that should never be ignored in our 
attempts to cure ourselves or others. It contains within it a price- 
less value and a sanative virtue above all that the Materia Medica 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 295 

has given to the world. It is the curative efficacy of a whole 
drug shop reduced to a single grain, in which there is a Divine 
sacramental and saving potency. 

We have in the phenomena of dreams, when the soul crosses 
the imperfectly defined boundary line between this world and 
the spiritual realm, a striking illustration of the influence of 
ideas over the body. In disease, when we are dreaming, we 
often for the time become well. It is one of the circumstances 
attending dreams that our ideas, or thoughts, are unmixed with 
sensations from without. In a sound slumber, the five senses are 
closed ; they are impervious and inaccessible to impressions from 
external things. But our ideas have oftentimes so much vividness 
as to have all the effects upon the body of sensations. Our 
thoughts, in fact, become internal sensations. They would do this 
in the waking state if our minds were equally abstracted, or, in 
other words, if there were the same degree of inattention to sur- 
rounding things. In dreams the invalid becomes to himself well, 
because ideal things and states become real things and states. 
It would be well for us to cultivate the faculty of dreaming our- 
selves into health and happiness while awake. 

The influence of thought in shaping the bodily condition is seen 
in the effects of a " fixed idea." Whenever the idea of an act, or 
a bodily state, is strongly presented to the mind, there is in it a 
marked tendency to work itself out into a full actuality. Take as 
an illustration of this the act of swallowing the saliva. A friend 
suggests to us that we cannot refrain from doing it for the space of 
a minute. This presents the idea of the muscular movement so 
vividly to the mind that we are almost sure to do it. The tend- 
ency to work out, or externalize, the idea is so strong that it 
overcomes the force of the will, which, in the case mentioned, is 
supposed to be arrayed against it. 

Tell a person that there is a fly, or a speck of dust, on his face, 
and, although there is none, and no sensation of one, yet the idea 
or thought immediately excites the muscles of the arm, and the 
act of brushing it off follows at once. Almost all peisons in look- 



296 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

ing from a higli tower have tlie thought of jumping off, and this 
is attended with a tendency more or less strong to do so. The 
man who leaped from the dome of the eapitol at Washington, a 
few years ago, probably did it from an impulse generated by the 
idea of it. Tell a person that he looks sick, or that he has some 
disease, and if the idea is vividly formed in his mind, and is 
accompanied with a degree of credence or faith, it will tend to 
actualize itself, through an invariable law of our nature, in a mor- 
bid condition of the body. The disease is the externalization of 
the thought, the expression, or pressing outward, of the mental 
state, the physical side or counterpart of the idea. All habitual 
mental states have their inseparable physical accompaniments. 
Melancholy, anxiety, impatience, remorse, and all abnormal and 
depressing mental conditions, with the ideas from which they 
spring, are invisible sculptors that fashion the body into their out- 
ward expression. Many diseases arise from a false idea, and if 
this is corrected, the tap-root of the malady is sundered. 

The law of the tendency of an idea to a bodily expression works 
with equal efficiency in the direction of a cure, as in the genera- 
tion of a diseased condition. Disease being in its spiritual root 
the fixedness of an idea, and its tendency to an ultimate manifesta- 
tion or actuality, must be supplanted by the thought or belief of a 
state of health. This, by a law of correspondence, will tend to 
actualize itself, or express itself outwardly by an altered condition 
of the physical organism. In proportion as the ideas suggested 
by a physician are accepted and mentally appropriated by the 
patient, they will have their influence in modifying the bodily 
state. They will tend to kill or make alive. On his words hangs 
life or death, health or disease. They have a far higher potency 
than his drugs. A short time ago I met a little girl who was suffer- 
ing from toothache. I placed a finger over a branch of the fifth 
pair of nerves, and suggested that the pain was passing away, and 
would soon be gone. In a moment or two the prophecy became 
fact, because the idea was accepted and believed. Like all ideas, 
it tended to a full actuality in the body. The cure, as I learned 



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THE DIVINE LAW OP CURE 297 

afterward, was also permanent. If a patient, as may sometimes 
be the case, is not in a receptive state, and our sanative idea is 
not transferred to him so as to become his own, if he exhibits a 
desire to recover, we must silently think, believe, and imagine for 
him, while he is passive and our hands in contact with him. Our 
thought will then affect him somewhat as his own thinking would, 
though less in degree. When he gains relief, as he probably will 
in a brief time, he will then accept and adopt as his own our sug- 
gested ideas, and, by a subtle and potent law of our being, they 
will tend to a full realization in the body. 

Hegel says : " Actuality brings immediately to pass the unity 
of essence with existence, or of the inward with the outward. 
The idea as being inward tends on every hand to the outward, so 
that the inner and outer become one." {Logic, pp. 221-223.) 
In the tendency of an ideal state to actualize itself in the body, 
and to create the body into its own image, we have an almost 
unused power in the cure of disease. A comprehensive knowledge 
of this law, and a skillful employment of it as a remedial agent, 
and the same faith in its uniform action that we have in the law 
of gravitation and chemical affinity, will render a practical use of 
the idealistic or spiritual philosophy much more efficient in the 
relief and cure of disease than the prevailing materialistic systems 
of medication. It reaches more effectually the hidden springs of 
life in the body. It penetrates to the center of our being, that 
may be impervious to the influence of a drug. 

The body and the soul are not two separate things, but one and 
the same, like cause and effect. These are a unity. A cause is 
in the effect, and an effect is in its cause. This was remarked by 
Descartes, who refers us to two facts of consciousness to prove the 
unity of the soul and body. When the body receives a wound we 
feel pain. The pain is in the soul-principle, but without a state of 
unity with the body would not be felt when the physical organism 
is injured. So, when there is need of new material in the body to 
supply the place of the worn-out particles that have been ejected 
by the excreting organs, the soul experiences a feeling of hunger. 



/ 



298 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

But this mental feeling and the need of new material conld not 
coexist unless the soul and body were a unity, and acted together. 
So, in all languages bodily actions are appropriated for the expres- 
sion of mental energies, as in the French penser, to think, which 
primarily means to weigh. To attend or give attention is primarily 
a stretching out, as the hand, toward a thing. All bodily actions 
and states are a word of which some mental energy is the spiritual 
meaning. So every idea in the mind tends to an actual expres- 
sion in the body, so as to maintain this unity and harmony, 
whether it be in the genesis of a diseased condition, or a state of 
health. If a person by some means forms the idea that a harm- 
less tumor is a cancer, and the thought becomes fixed, nature, in 
order to maintain the unity of the body and the soul, actually 
changes the character of the tumor and transforms it into a cancer. 
So the idea and the fear that an affection of the respiratory organs 
(though it is only a slight asthma) is an incipient phthisis will, by 
the power of the idea alone, change it to a consumption. I have 
known cases where a person supposed that he had come in contact 
with the poison ivy, the toxico dendron, and though it was demon- 
strably certain that he had not, it produced all the effects of actual 
poisoning. Such is the wonderful force of that mode of thought 
we call imagination. But, as was said above, the law works with 
equal efficiency and energy in the direction of a cure. If in the 
case of the tumor the patient thinks it is harmless and is passing 
away, and with a divine obstinacy holds the mind steadfastly to 
that idea, what we call nature (that is, an ever-present, ever- 
active God-life in the universe, an all-pervading World-Spirit) 
goes to work to place the body in harmony and unity with the idea, 
and the inward becomes the outward, and the tumor disappears 
with a rapidity proportioned to the strength and steadfastness of 
the thought or belief. -*" 

The reader will bear in mind that, with regard to the nature 
of thought, I accept and adopt the definition of Descartes, who 
says : " By the word thought I understand all that which so takes 
place in us that we of ourselves are immediately conscious of it ; 



THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 299 

and, accordingly, not only to understand, to will, to imagine, but 
even to perceive, are the same as to think." ( The Principles of 
Philosophy, Part I, Sec. IX.) In this sense of the term thought 
and existence are identical. All action of mind or body is pre- 
ceded by either conscious or unconscious thought. " Thought is 
indeed essential to humanity. It is this that distinguishes us from 
the brutes. In sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our 
instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is 
an invariable element." (HegeVs Philosophy of History, Bonn's 
Edition, p. 9.) 

What is called magnetism, which has proved itself one of the 
most efficient means of the cure of disease, owes its efficiency to 
the fact that in its inmost reality it is but the sphere of our 
thoughts and feelings. This continually emanes or exhales from 
us. This subtle spiritual principle which is perpetually escaping 
from us forms an atmosphere around us, which is charged with the 
living forces of our minds. The Sanscrit word for the soul is 
atma, which is equivalent to the Greek atmos, vapor or air, and 
enters into the composition of our word atmosphere. This emana- 
tive sphere of our minds, as Swedenborg calls it, having no deter- 
minate direction, does not perceptibly act upon those around us, 
except in the case of those who are highly sensitive. But it can 
be impelled by the will, — because it is only our personality dif- 
fused abroad, and is a part of our living self, — and a definite 
direction can be given to it. The principle which sets it in motion 
in a given direction exists in our souls in the same way as that 
which communicates strength to our arm, and its nature is similar; 
for physical strength is wholly a spiritual force and mental energy. 
By a gentle impulsion of the will, we concentrate this subtle force 
into the hands, and through the touch, by the same volitional act, 
we impress it with a determinate direction to any individual or to 
any part of his body. By the power of thought and volition, we 
may direct it to a person in the same room with us, or through 
many miles of space, even across the Atlantic ocean. 

In the human soul reside all the healing virtues and potencies 



300 THE DIVINE LAW OF CURE. 

that can be found in medicinal plants and minerals; for all mate- 
rial things correspond or answer to something in the mind, j The 
so-called properties of matter, as has been before shown, are 
reducible to sensations and other modifications of our minds. Take 
as an illustration the oak. The English term comes from a root 
that signifies strength, and originally the oak meant the strong 
tree. In one of the names used to designate this tree in the Latin 
language this idea is retained. The word robur, from which 
comes our term robust, means both an oak and vigorous strength. 
But this is not a property of any material body, but a quality and 
force of the mind. Hence, all the tonic virtue of this tree resides 
in the mind, and may be communicated to another. The same 
may be remarked of iron, and of cinchona, — so much used as 
tonic medicines, — and of all botanic and mineral substances. 
Their curative properties are something in their spiritual essence, 
which answers to some energy of the soul. These are stored up 
in a healthy person, ready to be imparted and, in fact, go forth 
from him in the sphere of his life. Jesus the Christ referred to 
something like this when, after the woman, having a spirit of 
infirmity, had touched the fringe of his garment and was made 
whole, he said that he perceived virtue, or a sanative force, had 
gone out of him. 

The hand is the divinely appointed medium through which a 
sanative spiritual influence is communicated to another. In this 
way Jesus imparted to the diseased and suffering a healing and 
saving virtue. (Mat. ix : 18, 19, 25 ; Mark viii : 25 ; vii : 32, 33, 
35; Luke xiii: 11, 13; Mark vi: 5.) On this subject Sweden- 
borg, more than a century ago, has said in a brief compass, nearly 
all that can be said. According to him, the touch signifies commu- 
nication, transference, and reception, because it is this in reality. 
The interiors of man put themselves forth by external things, 
especially by the touch, and thereby communicate with another, 
and transfer themselves to another, and so far as the will is in 
further agreement, and makes one, they are received. Whether 
we speak of the love or the will, it amounts to the same thing, 



THE DIYINE LAW OP CURE. 301 

for what is of the love of man this also is of ths will. Hence, 
also, it follows that the interiors of man, which are of his love, and 
the thought thence derived, put themselves forth by the touch, 
and thus communicate themselves with another, and transfer them- 
selves into another, and so far as another loves the person or 
the things which the person speaks or acts, so far they are received. 
(Arcana Celestia, 10,130. See also 10,023.) 

The practice of Jesus the Christ has given dignity to the use of 
the hand in the cure of disease, and the above extract contains the 
arcane philosophy of its efficiency, and the sum and substance of 
all that has been written on the subject of magnetism as a cura- 
tive agency from Mesmer to Delentze. 

The method of cure recommended in this volume is the plan of 
cure adopted and, with marvelous success, practiced eighteen centu- 
ries ago by Jesus. It is the same in all its essential features as 
his Divine method of healing through faith, and is based on his 
fundamental maxim, that "it is the spirit that maketh alive; the 
flesh profiteth nothing." (John vi : 63.) This is a complete 
inversion of our ordinary way of thinking, and of that which pre- 
vails in the various schools of medicine, where the condition of the 
fleshly manifestation of man is viewed as everything in disease, 
and the state of the living spiritual principle is as nothing. This 
view of human nature I believe to be false in philosophy, and 
deleterious to the highest well-being of humanity, when made the 
basis of a medical practice. It is an inversion of the Divine order, 
for God heals the body by saving the soul. Though the spiritual 
physician of today has to deal with a different class of people from 
the simple, child-like, trusting souls who came to the Christ 
eighteen hundred years ago for a cure of their maladies, yet, if his 
system is based upon a true philosophy of human nature, it can be 
made effectual today. Instead of an unthinking multitude, ready 
to be moulded into a new mode of thinking by any superior mind, 
we have to deal with those who have positive ideas, and have 
to encounter the pride of individual opinion which is sometimes 
called science. Yet some of these may become in spirit as little 



302 THE DIVINE LAW OP CDltB. 

children, and thus be receptive of the things of the kingdom" "of 
God. The man or woman who can be made to see and understand 
the law of our nature, by the operation of which the inward 
always tends to become one with the outward, ought to cooperate 
with the idealistic or spiritual physician in his beneficent healing 
endeavor, and if he is sufficiently desirous of being saved, or made 
whole, of whatever disease he has, he will do so. If he has no 
desire to be healed according to this Divine method, he can be 
left, as Jesus would have left him, to go his own way. 



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CONGRESS 




DDOESTflTSTD 



